Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an attorney for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, speaks following a hearing in federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Dec. 22, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

GREENBELT, Md. — U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis will retain an order keeping the wrongly deported El Salvador national Kilmar Abrego Garcia out of federal custody for the rest of the year, the judge said at a Monday hearing.

In the first hearing that Abrego Garcia was present for after his release last week, Xinis pressed U.S. Department of Justice attorneys to say by Friday how they planned to proceed, including whether they would seek a new warrant to arrest Abrego Garcia. Attorneys for Abrego Garcia would then be able to respond to the government next week, with a decision coming in the new year. 

Xinis expressed frustration with the Trump administration Monday, as she has throughout the monthslong case that has highlighted the nationwide crackdown on immigration.

She said she would “happily” consider a lawful request from the administration to detain Abrego Garcia under a different section of law than the one she has already rejected. But the government has not given her the assurance that they would pursue a different authority to detain him again.

“But the problem is, you want me to lift the (temporary restraining order) so that we don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said. “Why should I give the respondents the benefit of the doubt in this case? Why should I do that here? Show your work. That’s all.”

DOJ lawyer Ernesto Molina objected to a restriction on the government’s ability to detain Abrego Garcia.

“There’s no period during which an alien cannot be detained under the appropriate circumstances,” he said.

Move to Costa Rica?

Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, told reporters following the hearing that Abrego Garcia, who is married to and the father of U.S. citizens, would be with his family for the holidays.

“As of right now, Mr. Abrego Garcia is going to return to his home with his wife and his children and his family members in Maryland,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said. “And he will be at home through Christmas and New Year.”

Sandoval-Moshenberg also blamed the federal government for keeping Abrego Garcia in the country, rather than allowing him to self-deport to Costa Rica.

Costa Rica has agreed to accept Abrego Garcia, who entered the United States without legal authorization in 2011. The Trump administration has rejected deportation to the Central American country, instead proposing he be removed to several African nations to which he has no relationship.

Abrego Garcia “remains willing” to move to Costa Rica, Sandoval-Moshenberg told Xinis. If not for the government’s actions to pursue criminal charges in Tennessee and to reserve the right for future immigration enforcement in Maryland, Abrego Garcia would now be out of the country, Sandoval-Moshenberg said.

“It’s the government that’s preventing him from doing so,” he said. “He’s literally in a double bind. …. He’s got two ankle bracelets.”

Abrego Garcia after his deportation was imprisoned in a brutal prison in El Salvador and returned to the United States to face criminal charges in Tennessee stemming from a 2022 traffic stop. After he was ordered released from U.S. marshals’ custody by a federal judge, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained him again at an appointment at the Baltimore, Maryland, ICE field office.

In mid-December, he was released from the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania. He had remained there since September. 

An accounting error at the Wisconsin Department of Transportation that erroneously increased the paper value of state infrastructure assets has been corrected, according to the Legislative Audit Bureau. (Getty Images)

An accounting error led the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to erroneously increase the value on paper of the state’s infrastructure assets by nearly $900 million, legislative auditors said in a new analysis.

WisDOT corrected the error after the Legislative Audit Bureau drew it to the attention of the department, and the erroneous information was not included in the state’s 2024-25 fiscal year financial statements.

WisDOT had initially added $896 million to the value of the state’s capital infrastructure assets. It took that step after a previous audit report recommended a change in some of the department’s accounting procedures. In the process, however, WisDOT overlooked other accounting principles and procedures, which if followed would not have led to the error, according to the audit bureau’s report on the Wisconsin’s 2024-25 financial statements

WisDOT officials agreed with the new audit finding and said they would follow through on the audit bureau’s recommendations to update their procedures.

WisDOT was one of two state agencies that the Legislative Audit Bureau spotlighted in the financial statement audit report. The report was released Friday, Dec. 19, and highlighted Monday by the co-chairs of the Legislature’s Joint Audit Committee.

The audit report also said the state Department of Administration hasn’t adequately addressed security concerns relating to the state’s information technology systems that have been raised in previous audits.

“These audit findings have been found for numerous years, with no corrections taken by DOA,” stated a press release from the audit committee’s Republican co-chairs, Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) and Rep. Robert Wittke (R-Caledonia).

Corrections are underway, however, according to Kathy Blumenfeld, DOA secretary-designee.

In a letter responding to the audit, Blumenfeld wrote that while the audit bureau’s findings were “repeated from previous years,” the department “has in the last year implemented certain corrective actions consistent with the auditors’ recommendations.”

Those changes will require “sustained multiyear execution,” she wrote, given the nature of the audit findings. She also wrote that lawmakers have declined to increase DOA funding for cybersecurity, adding that more state funding “will be imperative to ensure the long-term security needs of the state.”

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Wind turbines generate electricity at the Block Island Wind Farm on July 7, 2022, near Block Island, Rhode Island. The first commercial offshore wind farm in the United States is located in the Atlantic Ocean 3.8 miles from Block Island, Rhode Island. The five-turbine, 30 MW project was developed by Deepwater Wind and began operations in December, 2016. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration said Monday it’s halting leases for five large-scale offshore wind projects under construction along the East Coast due to national security risks.

The Interior Department paused the projects — off the coasts of Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Virginia and New York — due to analysis from reports that have “long found that the movement of massive turbine blades and the highly reflective towers create radar interference,” which poses a national security risk, according to a department release.

“Today’s action addresses emerging national security risks, including the rapid evolution of the relevant adversary technologies, and the vulnerabilities created by large-scale offshore wind projects with proximity near our east coast population centers,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement alongside the announcement. 

The Interior Department said “the clutter caused by offshore wind projects obscures legitimate moving targets and generates false targets in the vicinity of the wind projects.” 

The department said leases for Vineyard Wind 1, off Massachusetts; Revolution Wind, off Rhode Island and Connecticut; Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind; along with Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind 1, off New York, have been paused “effective immediately.” 

The department noted that the pause would give it, the Defense Department and other agencies “time to work with leaseholders and state partners to assess the possibility of mitigating the national security risks posed by these projects.” 

The moves are part of the administration’s continued attacks against the renewable energy source, which have spilled into courts. A federal judge found this month that Trump’s January order halting permits for offshore wind projects was unlawful. 

‘Desperate rerun’ 

The action drew swift backlash from major environmental advocacy groups and Democratic officials. 

Ted Kelly, director and lead counsel for U.S. clean energy at Environmental Defense Fund, said in a Monday statement the administration is “again unlawfully blocking clean, affordable energy.”

The administration has “baselessly and unlawfully attacked wind energy with delays, freezes and cancellations, while propping up aging, expensive coal plants that barely work and pollute our air,” Kelly added.

Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at the Conservation Law Foundation, described the move as a “desperate rerun of the Trump administration’s failed attempt to kill offshore wind — an effort the courts have already rejected.” 

She added that many of the projects had already won approvals through “rigorous review” and court challenges.

“Trying again to halt these projects tramples on the rule of law, threatens jobs, and deliberately sabotages a critical industry that strengthens, not weakens, America’s energy security,” she said. 

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also weighed in, saying in a Monday social media post Trump was “trying AGAIN to kill thousands of good-paying union jobs and raise your electricity bill.”  

The New York Democrat said he’s “been fighting Trump’s war against offshore wind — a war that threatens American jobs and American energy” and vowed to continue fighting “to make sure these projects, the thousands of jobs they create, and the energy they provide can continue.” 

Rhode Island lawmakers slam pause 

Lawmakers in Rhode Island were also quick to blast the administration’s effort, which affects the Revolution Wind project off its own coast. 

Rep. Seth Magaziner said that “at a time when working people in Rhode Island are struggling with high costs on everything, Trump should not be canceling energy projects that are nearly ready to deliver reliable power to the grid at below-market rates and help lower costs.” 

The Rhode Island Democrat rebuked the administration’s claims that Revolution Wind and the other offshore wind projects present national security concerns as “unfounded,” noting that “the Department of Defense thoroughly reviewed and signed off on this project during the permitting and approval process.” 

Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said in a statement Monday that Revolution Wind “was long ago thoroughly vetted and fully permitted by the federal government, and that review included any potential national security questions.” 

Whitehouse, the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the move “looks more like the kind of vindictive harassment we have come to expect from the Trump administration than anything legitimate.” 

“This is President Donald ‘Stop Work’ Trump trying to keep affordable, clean energy off the grid, without a care about how many working people have to lose their jobs to keep his fossil fuel billionaires happy,” he said. 

In a statement Monday, Sen. Jack Reed noted that amid an increase in energy prices, policymakers should be promoting new energy sources.

“Trump’s repeated attacks on offshore wind are holding our nation back, increasing energy bills, and hurting our economy,” the Rhode Island Democrat said. 

Chequamegon Family Restaurant, also known as the Ashland Family Restaurant, where two workers were arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Monday, Dec. 15. (Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner)

Federal U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested two individuals at the Chequamegon Family Restaurant (also known as the Ashland Family Restaurant) Monday, Dec. 15 in the city of Ashland in far northern Wisconsin on the shores of Lake Superior.

This is the second arrest ICE agents have made in the Ashland/Bayfield area since July when an individual was arrested at Washburn Iron Works in the city of Washburn.

The Ashland City Police Department issued a statement Friday, Dec. 19 saying that ICE and U.S. Border Patrol officers had informed the police department that federal officers had a federal warrant for two individuals at the “Ashland Family Restaurant.”

The police department noted the federal officers had “picked up” one employee in the morning, and then returned after requesting that a city police officer be present because “the restaurant staff was very upset with them the first time they were there.”

A Dec. 15 police dispatch report notes that Officer Mark Campry was requested at 12:04 p.m. to the restaurant. 

According to the police statement, when the federal officers returned with the local police officer there was a request to open the doors and a second person was taken into custody.

The police did not say what type of warrant ICE had to make the arrest. ICE has not yet responded to a request for that information.

Alexandra Guevara of Voces de la Frontera, an immigrant workers’ rights organization, says there is an important difference between judicial warrants, signed by judges in cases where individuals are wanted for a crime, and ICE administrative warrants, which lack the same force.

“Nobody should open their doors for an ICE warrant. It’s an illegal instrument,” Guevara said.  “When we do our Know Your Rights trainings, it’s the first thing we tell people — you have to be able to get a warrant that is actually signed by a judge, that includes your address, that includes your name, your official name, and you have the ability to get that warrant, send it to a lawyer, send a picture to a lawyer, and ask, ‘Should I open the door or not?’”

Reporters for the Ashland Daily Press said they also were told by an employee of Deltco, a plastics manufacturer, that an employee at the plant was taken in custody by the federal officers Monday. Deltco management did not return calls from the Wisconsin Examiner attempting to verify whether an employee had been arrested.

Voces de la Frontera has identified one of the restaurant employees, a cook, as Luis Davids Coatzeozon Gomes, but has not been able to find out where he is being held.

“One of the things that happens with some of these detentions is that they’re detained and immediately sent somewhere else,” said Guevara, “so they don’t need to report them. And I mean, that creates a lot of confusion, that makes it impossible for their families to find them. It also makes it very difficult for lawyers to represent them, because they need to be in one place to be represented by a lawyer who can have access to them.”

She added, “We know that the ACLU has been dealing with that, talking all over the nation about how difficult it is now to trace where people are being taken because they’re being moved every two to three days, sometimes crossing state borders, like even being sent to places as far as Florida from here. And that makes it very, very difficult to know exactly how many people have been detained because they’re not being reported here.”

Guevara said most ICE detainees in Wisconsin are held, at least temporarily, in the Dodge County Jail. However, nearby Douglas County also has an agreement to hold ICE detainees. The ACLU reported in September that the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office had billed ICE for detaining 111 persons since the beginning of 2025.

State Rep. Angela Stroud, (D-Ashland) questioned why a city police officer accompanied the federal officers making an immigration arrest.

“My view on this is, if there’s probable cause that someone committed a crime, then you know, that’s a reasonable thing for the police to be involved in, because clearly, fighting crime is part of what we want to happen in our communities,” she said.

In answer to a question about the police involvement in the arrest, Ashland City Police Chief Bill Hagstrom sent the Ashland Daily Press a citation from the city’s police manual, 416.6 “Federal Request for Assistance” that states: “requests by federal immigration officials for assistance from this department should be directed to a supervisor. The Department may provide available support services, such as traffic control or peacekeeping efforts.”

Rep. Stroud also expressed concern about taking workers from employers struggling to maintain adequate staffing during a labor shortage in a city of fewer than 8,000 people.

“We have problems finding people to work generally around here,” she said, “and you know, we have an aging population. We have a lot of workforce shortages. What is the big picture goal here, and how does it help our community? How does this help our community?  I would like someone to explain that. And I recognize people need to, you know, follow immigration laws, but we’re seeing more and more that even people who do follow the law are being deported. And it’s just irrational. I don’t understand the big picture goal, except maybe to terrorize communities, and that’s, needless to say, is completely unethical.”

She added, “Unfortunately, we’re seeing these large raids and sweeps of people who are working and, you know, sometimes we’re even finding people who are American citizens getting caught up in that. So I recognize that people have a lot of strong feelings on this topic.” 

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An empty high school classroom. (Dan Forer | Getty Images)

Wisconsin property taxpayers are expected to see the largest increases in local government levies on their December bills since 2018, according to a recent report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum. 

Much of that increase is driven by levies from K-12 schools, which are estimated to increase by 7.8%. Preliminary data from the state Department of Revenue (DOR) shows the property tax levies for K-12 school districts are expected to rise by about $476.1 million to $6.58 billion on December tax bills. 

County property taxes are set to rise 3.1% — an increase more in line with recent years. 

According to the report, the increase in school levies is the result of decisions made in the last two state budgets, including increases to school revenue limits while keeping state general aid flat, as well as voter approval of school district referendum requests. 

During the 2023-25 state budget, lawmakers included a $325 increase to schools districts’ revenue limits in each year along with two years of funding for the increase. Gov. Tony Evers’ partial veto allowed school districts to raise the additional $325 per pupil annually for the next 400 years, but did not include the funding.

Evers and Democratic lawmakers advocated for the state to provide additional state aid, but Republicans, who hold the majority, rejected those calls.

“Typically, a portion of the per pupil revenue limit increase is covered by rising state general school aids,” the report states. “This time, state leaders instead kept the funding for these payments flat, leaving property taxes as the sole means by which school districts collectively could access the allowed $325 per student increase.”

State leaders did provide additional funding to schools for their special education costs, though initial estimates show that the state money set aside will not be enough to bring the reimbursement rate to 42% of special ed costs as leaders promised in the budget.

The report notes that state leaders decided to use the state budget surplus to cut income taxes instead of  providing school funding to limit property tax increases. It said that is in line with “a trend since 2011 in Wisconsin of falling spending on K-12 education as a share of personal income” and “means that the responsibility for paying for local government services, especially schools, is shifting more heavily to property taxpayers this year than it otherwise might have.”

School districts get to make a choice about whether they take advantage of additional school revenue authority by taxing the maximum amount.

“Rising pressure on both revenues and expenditures, however, appears to have prompted many districts to levy at or near the maximum amount,” the report states. “These pressures include rising teacher salaries and inflation, revenue limit increases in recent years that lagged the rate of inflation, and decreased funding associated with declining student enrollment and the expiration of federal pandemic relief funds.”

According to the report, 28.7% of school districts have a levy increase of more than 10% in 2025. This includes some communities that have levy increases of more than 30% including Wauwatosa, a large suburban district, and Bruce and Markesan, which are small rural school districts.

One example highlighted in the report is the Beloit School District, whose levy tripled in 2025 from $5.6 million to $16.2 million.

The school district lost $9.8 million in state general school aids this year. The Department of Public Instruction reported in October that 71% of public school districts would receive less general school aid this year, which was in part because general state aid remained flat. Schools that lose state aid are able to make up for the reduction by increasing their levy.

The report notes that the “sharp rise in property taxes therefore does not represent a correspondingly sharp increase in core district revenue, which still only rose by the allowable increase under the revenue limit.”

School referendum requests are also making up part of the increase as school districts continue to turn to voters to help meet costs in lieu of state funding increases.

Wisconsin had the largest amount of school referendum requests passed in state history in November 2024, raising property taxes by over $3.4 billion that year. In 2025, Wisconsin voters also approved the largest number of school referendums in an off year since 2015. 

Madison Metropolitan school district’s levy increased by $81.1 million from the large referendum it passed in 2024. It also lost $11.9 million in state general aid, allowing it to increase property taxes to make up for that loss. The report notes that Madison’s increases alone make up 17% of the overall K-12 levy increase, though “without Madison’s increase, statewide tax levies would have increased by 6.9%, which would have been the third highest rate in the last 25 years.”

The report warns that property taxpayers could see similar increases to their property taxes in coming years.

“State law will provide another $325 per pupil revenue increase [next year] but again no increase in state general school aids or property tax credits. The increase in special education aid will also be smaller than this year,” the report states. “Absent some special action by the state Legislature and governor early next year, property taxpayers will likely see more of the same in December 2026.”

Some lawmakers want to get rid of revenue increase, others propose overhauling system

As property taxpayers receive their December bills, lawmakers have been proposing ways to prevent further hikes and cut property taxes, though it’s unclear whether the proposals will lead to concrete changes before the close of the legislative session next year.

Republican lawmakers are still seeking the elimination of the annual school revenue increases. 

A bill coauthored by Rep. Dave Maxey (R-New Berlin) and Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield) would stop the $325 annual increases for school districts starting in the 2027-28 school year. It received a public hearing last week.

A memo from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau found that 58 school districts levied less than the amount they could — meaning that 363 of Wisconsin’s 421 school districts levied the maximum amount in 2025.

“To those who think districts aren’t going to automatically increase revenue limits each year, you are believing a lie,” Maxey said in written testimony. “The 400-year veto is going to be extremely destructive to almost every homeowner in the years to come.”

Maxey said the bill would “restore balance and accountability” by giving control to lawmakers and taxpayers.

“Decisions about raising property taxes should be made by the people who pay them, not imposed by executive action,” Maxey said.

Evers has stood by his partial veto, making it unlikely he would sign the bill.

Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) is less bothered with the 400-year increase, calling it a “parlor trick” that “just provided the additional capacity for local governments to lean more on property taxes to fund education, which is inequitable.” Last week, he proposed a package of bills meant to overhaul the way Wisconsin K-12 schools and local governments bring in revenue as a way to cut property taxes. 

“I’m less inclined to demonize a $325 a year potential increase than to attack the actual problem, which is this over reliance on property taxes to fund K-12 education,” Clancy said. “The problem is distinctly Republican. The state has been starving schools of resources. It’s been starving local government of resources. When you do those things then schools and local governments have to ask for money in the way of property taxes, because that’s the only mechanism available to them.”

Clancy told the Examiner that he sees the state’s reliance on property taxes to fund schools “inherently inequitable” as it determines funding based on the size and costs of houses nearby.

“In Wisconsin, we have an extremely ridiculous and complex funding formula that tries to provide a little bit more aid to make up that gap, but it doesn’t fit the bill, and it’s really been kind of a terrible system,” Clancy said.

Clancy said that he’s heard from community members, especially from older adults on fixed incomes that they want to chip in to help with schools, but it’s getting to where they “cannot afford to live in this community anymore.”

“We’ve been talking to folks who have left Milwaukee and sometimes left the state because they cannot afford the property taxes on their homes that they worked their whole lives to afford, and in some cases, they’ve lived in these homes for generations, and yet, the property tax burden from our very regressive property taxes is just too much for a lot of people around the market,” Clancy said. “We can change that, and we should.”

Clancy’s package of bills aim to bring down property taxes by eliminating school districts’ reliance on property taxes by increasing income taxes on the state’s wealthier residents.

Clancy said the bill would lead to on average a 44% cut to people’s property taxes.

“Generally, if you look at the median across the state, 44% of your property tax bill goes to K-12 education. That percentage is actually a little bit higher in Milwaukee, so Milwaukee residents will see a greater savings from this,” Clancy said.

According to a draft, which is still being finalized, the bill would increase the tax rate for Wisconsin’s fourth income tax bracket to 8.85% by taxable year 2026. It would also create a new fifth tax bracket with a rate of 17.7% by taxable year 2026 on those making at least $750,000 for single taxpayers and $1 million for married couples filing jointly. The revenue from the income tax hikes would be used to pay for education costs including boosting the special education reimbursement rate to 90%.

“The problem of inequity in education is a massive structural problem. We’re not going to fix that by nibbling around the edges of it… We could do half measures. We could say, you know, a 5% reduction in property taxes,” Clancy said. “Ultimately, that doesn’t fix the problem.”

Clancy is also proposing allowing local governments the option to implement a local income tax and reimplementing the estate tax in Wisconsin, which would tax transfers of property that take place upon a person’s death.

Clancy said the proposal would address the ways “Wisconsin has been starving our municipalities and counties of their own share revenue for a long time now.”

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Oak Bluff Natural Area in Door County, which was protected by the Door County Land Trust using Knowles-Nelson Stewardship funds in 2023. (Photo by Kay McKinley)

At a Wisconsin Assembly committee meeting in November to consider a proposal to extend the widely popular Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program, Rep. Rob Swearingen (R-Rhinelander) complained that too much land in his district has been conserved through the program.

That sentiment has become increasingly common among a subset of Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature, most of them representing the far northern reaches of the state. The complaint they often make is that Knowles-Nelson has taken too much land off local property tax rolls, depriving already struggling local governments of important revenue. 

These complaints also go hand-in-hand with laments that the Wisconsin Supreme Court undermined the Legislature’s authority to conduct oversight of the grant program by ruling the Republican-controlled Joint Committee on Finance was unconstitutionally blocking stewardship grant projects proposed by the Department of Natural Resources. These Republicans say that their districts have borne the burden of Wisconsin’s land conservation goals for too long and some of that work should shift to southern parts of the state.

Because of this group’s objections in the Republican legislative caucus, the stewardship program is facing its demise next year.

Popular program hits roadblocks 

The Knowles-Nelson program was started in 1989 to fund land conservation in the state. Grants from the program to local governments and non-profits help cover some of the costs for purchasing and conserving land that can be used for recreation, preserving animal habitats and supporting local industries such as forestry. Polls have shown an overwhelming majority of Wisconsinites support the program. 

Despite that support, it is set to expire next summer and, so far, legislative efforts to extend the program have failed. 

In his initial 2025-27 state budget proposal, Gov. Tony Evers asked to extend the program for ten years with $100 million in annual funding. Republicans stripped that provision from the budget immediately. 

Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) and Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) have authored a bill that would extend the program for four years at $28 million per year. The bill also includes a provision that would require the full Legislature to approve any land purchases that cost more than $1 million — a proposal that critics say would be far too slow for the speed at which real estate transactions need to move. 

A separate proposal from Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) would re-authorize the program for six years at $72 million per year and create an independent board made up of members appointed by the Legislature to approve large land purchases through the program.

Separately, Rep. Shae Sortwell (R-Two Rivers) has introduced a proposed constitutional amendment that would require the full Legislature to approve any state spending on land conservation.

Data contradicts lawmakers’ complaints 

The complaints that Knowles-Nelson has conserved too much Northwoods land may prove fatal to the program in a Legislature that has been unable to find common ground on environmental issues. 

But an analysis of public lands data shows that the Knowles-Nelson program plays a comparatively small role in Wisconsin’s conserved land portfolio. Despite the claims of critics, the program’s land purchases have been made in all corners of the state. 

knowles nelson by assembly district

“Knowles-Nelson becomes like sort of the straw man argument,” says Charles Carlin, director of strategic initiatives at the land conservation non-profit Gathering Waters. “If legislators stood up and said, ‘I don’t think that we should have public land in the way that we do, we should reduce our public land portfolio,’ that would be a terribly unpopular position.”

The program has widespread support, he says.

“Public lands are the prized heritage of Americans, right?” Carlin says. “It’s one of the only things that we just largely agree on as a country, is that we are really proud of our public lands. And this is part of our national identity, and I think it’s certainly part of our Wisconsin identity.” 

Swearingen’s 34th district, which covers north central Wisconsin from Rhinelander up to the Michigan border, has more land conserved by the DNR than any other district in the state — almost 335,000 acres, nearly 24% of the district. That includes land set aside for state parks, natural areas, forests and similar uses. 

But only 4.7% of the district is conserved through Knowles-Nelson. Another 4.6% of his district is conserved by the federal government, and 8.6% is conserved county forest land. 

Despite the claims that Knowles-Nelson has devoured valuable land across the state, no Assembly district has had more than 5.1% of its land conserved through the program, data shows. The average amount of Knowles-Nelson conserved land across all 99 Assembly districts is 1.13%. 

Many small purchases

Ron Eckstein, a board member of Wisconsin Green Fire, says Knowles-Nelson is best equipped to help the state purchase smaller tracts to connect already conserved land across the southern part of the state. 

“Many state fish and wildlife areas, state parks, and state natural areas across the southern two-thirds of Wisconsin have private land inholdings within their property boundaries,” he said in an email. 

“It is very important to continue to purchase these inholdings so these state properties can meet their intended purpose: fish and wildlife habitat, rare species, game species, public access, recreation and recreational trails,” Eckstein said. “This means continuing the long-term, slow process of purchasing a 20-acre tract here and an 80-acre tract there to complete these state-owned areas and fulfill their public purpose.”

state land by assembly district

Other DNR land and federal land take up hundreds of thousands more acres across the state. 

The 74th District, represented by Rep. Chanz Green and Sen. Romaine Quinn has the most Knowles-Nelson land at 5.1%. Nearly 11% of the district is other DNR land while 14.5% is federal land and 23.8% is county land.

Twenty Assembly districts have more general DNR conserved land than the 74th has Knowles-Nelson land. 

Across the five Assembly districts with the most federal land, 1,596,129 acres have been conserved. Across the five districts with the most Knowles-Nelson land, 413,453 acres have been conserved. 

The data also contradicts Republican claims that the northern parts of the state unfairly get too much land conservation attention. 

The Dane County districts represented by Reps. Mike Bare (D-Verona), Alex Joers (D-Waunakee) and Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison) are all among the 10 districts with the highest percentage of land conserved through Knowles-Nelson. Rep. Karen DeSanto’s Baraboo-area district, Rep. Chuck Wichgers’ suburban Waukesha County district and Rep. Scott Krug’s district south of Stevens Point are also in the top 10.

When divided by dollar amount, Knowles-Nelson is similarly disbursed. Since its inception, $1.2 billion has been given out through the program to all but one of the Assembly districts; the Milwaukee district of Rep. Supreme Moore-Omukunde (D-Milwaukee) is the only district to not receive any money. 

The 36th district, represented by Rep. Jeff Mursau (R-Crivitz), has gotten the most of that money — $102 million, which amounts to 7% of the total Knowles-Nelson purchases over the program’s lifetime. But districts have received an average of $13 million through the program.

federal land by assembly district

“While we’ve done some really cool things with Knowles-Nelson, it’s largely been a drop in the bucket of our sort of overall public lands portfolio,” Carlin says. While some critics complain about the state’s total public land portfolio, he adds,  “Knowles Nelson investments are really targeted and strategic, and cumulatively not actually that big.”

Republicans defend focusing on Knowles-Nelson because they have limited control over the land conserved by the federal and county governments.  Legislators have authority over the program through the biennial budget process and the confirmation of members of the Natural Resources Board, but despite that, have put the stewardship program in the crosshairs. 

In the last several years, Republicans on the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee began using passive review — an anonymous veto system — to selectively block some Knowles-Nelson projects, to the wide condemnation of members of the public and conservation groups. A 2024 state Supreme Court ruling, in a lawsuit filed by Gov. Tony Evers against the committee’s co-chair, Sen. Howard Marklein, found that the “legislative veto” was unconstitutional. 

“Until the Evers v. Marklein decision by the liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court, there was a good process in place for new stewardship land purchases,” Sen. Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) told the Wisconsin Examiner in a statement. “Those checks and balances between the executive branch and the Legislature ensured that it was a collective decision, and that the state did not overpay for stewardship land. Unfortunately, since this process was destroyed, the Legislature is forced to put even more scrutiny on the stewardship program.”

County Forest by Assembly District

Carlin says the program has played an important role in helping local governments in more rural parts of the state invest in projects that help the local economy in the long term. Dane County’s recently passed 2026 budget includes $20 million for land conservation, which is not an expense most counties can afford. 

“But if collectively, we choose as a state to say this is an important priority, we’re all going to work on this together, then we can make meaningful investments in rural communities that wouldn’t otherwise be able to do it themselves,” Carlin says. 

“At a time when there is such incredible inequality of wealth and opportunity,” he adds, “what the data tells us is that Knowles-Nelson has been a really good democratizer of investments in conservation and recreation.”

State and federal proposals to regulate and restrict medication abortion are expected to continue in 2026 as abortion opponents claim, without strong evidence, that abortion medication is dangerous to patients and the environment. (Getty Images)

Going into the fourth year without federal abortion rights protections, groups that helped overturn Roe v. Wade are focused on cutting off access to abortion pills. As multiple lawsuits over the abortion drug mifepristone unfold, state and federal proposals to regulate and restrict medication abortion are expected to continue in 2026. Abortion opponents argue that medication abortion, despite its strong safety record, is dangerous to patients and the environment.

Abortion bans are largely unpopular, but heading into a midterm election year, some lawmakers in states with strict abortion bans have already prefiled bills to add new restrictions. Here’s a look at early legislative trends emerging in abortion-related bills recently introduced or prefiled ahead of the new year.

Proposals to restrict abortion pill or study environmental effects

Over the last few years, the national anti-abortion group Students for Life of America has spread unfounded claims that mifepristone pollutes U.S. waterways and drinking water, drafted model legislation to regulate the disposal of medication abortions, and requested environmental studies at the federal and state level. 

In 2025, lawmakers in at least seven states introduced bills to create environmental restrictions for the abortion drug mifepristone or order environmental studies. Bills introduced this year in Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming would have required testing community water systems for traces of mifepristone. 

Bills in Maine, Montana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming would have required providers to give patients medical waste kits to collect and return the tissue following a medication abortion. Women commonly flush the tissue associated with medication abortion and miscarriages, which typically occur during the first trimester. 

These bills, except Pennsylvania’s, would have also mandated in-person dispensing of the medication and follow-ups, effectively banning telehealth abortion. 

None of these proposals passed, but they are likely to be reintroduced in 2026 as abortion opponents continue to push for environmental regulation of abortion pills, including at the federal level. 

In June, 25 congressional Republicans sent the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency a letter inquiring about potential avenues for regulating mifepristone, as the New York Times reported. And as Politico recently reported, Students For Life lobbied the agency to add mifepristone to its recently updated list of contaminants that utilities will have to track in drinking water. It’s too late to include a new drug on the list, which is updated every five years. 

But according to Politico, EPA staffers advised anti-abortion activists to use an upcoming public comment period to drum up requests that the agency include active metabolites in mifepristone. The EPA collects nationwide data on the chemicals on this list, which could be used to set future federal limits.  

Fetal wrongful death bills 

In Florida, where abortion is banned at six weeks’ gestation, lawmakers recently advanced HB 289 ahead of the 2026 session, which would allow parents to file wrongful death lawsuits for the loss of a developing fetus and to claim damages for mental pain and loss of support. Its companion bill, SB 164, filed for the third year in a row by Republican Sen. Erin Grall, faces an uphill battle in the Florida Senate, reported the Florida Phoenix, which noted that jurors could be asked to consider the salary the fetus could have earned over its life as part of damages to which parents could be entitled. 

Groups opposing the legislation as far-reaching and likely to increase liability exposure for OB-GYNs who specialize in high-risk pregnancies include the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, the Florida Justice Reform Institute and the Doctors Company, the nation’s largest physician-owned medical malpractice carrier.

One of the bill’s leading champions, Andrew Shirvell, founder and executive director of Florida Voice for the Unborn, told state House Judiciary Committee members they should continue expanding “civil remedies afforded under Florida law to hold accountable those who continue to take the lives of unborn children illegally in our state.”

Another bill, HB 663, would allow a family member to sue someone for providing or attempting to provide an abortion up to two years after the fact with up to $100,000 in damages, even if the woman consented or if the abortion was performed in another state or country where the procedure is legal.

Attempts to overturn or skirt abortion rights ballot measures 

Even though Missouri voters in 2024 approved an amendment to protect abortion rights in the state constitution, broad access has not returned to the state. Between January and October, there were only 80 in-clinic abortion procedures in Missouri, according to state data, with an additional 79 abortions in hospitals and identified as medical emergencies.

A trial in January could determine whether Missouri’s anti-abortion laws violate the voter-approved amendment. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers have put a new constitutional amendment on the 2026 ballot that would ban nearly all abortions in the state with limited exceptions.   

In 2023, Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights through fetal viability, and prohibiting the state from interfering with or penalizing someone for exercising that right. But Republicans have been advancing anti-abortion bills to create restrictions that make accessing abortion more difficult without directly flouting the amendment. 

During this legislative session, which ends Dec. 31, state Sen. Kyle Koehler introduced SB 309, which could add steps to accessing medication abortion and would require doctors to deliver a state-mandated script about the dangers of mifepristone. It would also allow patients, their parents if they’re underage, or the father of the fetus  to sue if they feel the patient was uninformed when taking the pill.

In November, the Ohio House passed HB 485, which would require students in fifth through 12th grade to watch either a “Meet Baby Oliva” fetal development video created by the national anti-abortion group Live Action, or a similar video. Live Action’s video has been criticized by reproductive health advocates for not being fully medically accurate or comprehensive. Similar bills have been introduced in dozens of states this year, and have been enacted in Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, North Dakota and Tennessee. 

Abortion records privacy

Privacy concerns around reproductive health in the post-Roe era persist nationally. Lawmakers in states that protect abortion rights continue to try to shore up medical and data privacy protections for abortion, which is almost completely illegal in more than a dozen states. 

In Indiana, where the legislative session began in December, Sen. La Keisha Jackson introduced SB 109. Under the measure, a health care provider’s report about an abortion submitted to the Indiana health department as a medical record would be confidential and not subject to disclosure as a public record. In a state lawsuit brought by two OB-GYNs from Indianapolis, an appeals court in December upheld the privacy of these records, known as terminated pregnancy reports.

In Washington state, Democratic lawmakers are still drafting legislation that would regulate license plate readers following reports that authorities in Texas searched thousands of cameras, as far as Washington and Illinois, to find a woman they believed had a self-administered medication abortion. 

Calling for forced vasectomies for convicted rapists

State abortion restrictions typically hold health providers liable, but women have been jailed or prosecuted for their pregnancy outcomes. One Democratic lawmaker in Alabama, where abortion is banned throughout pregnancy except to save the pregnant person’s life, has introduced legislation that comes with steep penalties for men convicted of rape or incest that resulted in pregnancy. 

Democratic Rep. Juandalynn Givan’s prefiled HB 46 would authorize abortion to preserve the health of the mother or if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. It would also require men convicted of rape or incest to pay for the abortion, and undergo either vasectomy or castration, as determined by the court. As the Alabama Reflector reported, the bill is unlikely to be considered, but for Givan it’s really about starting a broader conversation of bodily autonomy. 

“We have already set a double standard,” Givan said. “Have you seen a bill crafted that tells a man what he cannot … do with his body? You have not, outside of the standard laws that speaks to rape and incest, and we already know that that is definitely a crime.”

Anticipated federal policy decisions during Trump’s second year 

In his first year back in office, President Donald Trump rescinded many of the Biden-era policies intended to expand abortion access, including the previous administration’s interpretation that the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act covers abortions necessary to save a pregnant person’s life even in a state that has banned abortion.

More major federal policy decisions around abortion are anticipated in 2026. The Food and Drug Administration agreed to review mifepristone’s safety, but abortion opponents recently called for FDA Commissioner Martin Makary to be fired, accusing him of slow-walking the review until after the midterm elections in November. 

Just a few months before that, in July, a controversial Medicaid policy effectively defunding Planned Parenthood clinics and other nonprofit clinics that provide abortions, is slated to expire. Whether Republicans will renew the funding restriction or let it lapse — allowing the nation’s largest network of reproductive health clinics to continue serving Medicaid patients for services unrelated to abortion — remains to be seen.

The former site of the We Energies Power Plant on Nov. 13, 2025, in Pleasant Prairie, Wis. (Photo by Joe Timmerman/Wisconsin Watch)

By some measures, the Pleasant Prairie Power Plant, once regarded locally as an “iconic industrial landmark,” had a good run.

Opened in 1980 near Lake Michigan in Kenosha County, it became Wisconsin’s largest generating plant, burning enough Wyoming coal, some 13,000 tons a day, to provide electricity for up to 1 million homes.

But over time, the plant became too expensive to operate. The owner, We Energies, shut it down after 38 years, in 2018.

We Energies customers, however, are still on the hook.

A portion of their monthly bills will continue to pay for Pleasant Prairie until 2039 — 21 years after the plant stopped producing electricity.

In fact, residential and business utility customers throughout Wisconsin owe nearly $1 billion on “stranded assets” — power plants like Pleasant Prairie that have been or will soon be shut down, a Wisconsin Watch investigation found.

That total will likely grow over the next five years with additional coal plants scheduled to cease operations.

Customers must pay not only for the debt taken on to build and upgrade the plants themselves, but also an essentially guaranteed rate of return for their utility company owners, long after the plants stop generating revenue themselves.

“We really have a hard time with utilities profiting off of dead power plants for decades,” said Todd Stuart, executive director of the Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group.

The $1 billion tab looms as Wisconsin utility companies aim to generate unprecedented amounts of electricity for at least seven major high-tech data centers that are proposed, approved or under construction. By one estimate, just two of the data centers, which are being built to support the growth of artificial intelligence, would use more electricity than all Wisconsin homes combined.

All of which raises an important question in Wisconsin, where electricity rates have exceeded the Midwest average for 20 years.

What happens to residents and other ratepayers if AI and data centers don’t pan out as planned, creating a new generation of stranded assets?

How much do Wisconsin ratepayers owe on stranded assets?

Of the five major investor-owned utilities operating in Wisconsin, two — We Energies and Wisconsin Public Service Corp. — have stranded assets on the books. Both companies are subsidiaries of Milwaukee-based WEC Energy Group.

As of December 2024, when the company released its most recent annual report, We Energies estimated a remaining value of more than $700 million across three power plants with recently retired units: Pleasant Prairie, Oak Creek and Presque Isle, a plant on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Wisconsin Public Service Corp.’s December 2024 report listed roughly $30 million in remaining value on recently retired units at two power plants.

In total, utilities owned by WEC Energy Group will likely have over $1 billion in recently retired assets by the end of 2026.

The company also noted a remaining value of just under $250 million for its share of units at Columbia Generating Station slated to retire in 2029, alongside a remaining value of roughly $650 million for units at Oak Creek scheduled to retire next year.

Its customers will pay off that total, plus a rate of return, for years to come.

The company estimates that closing the Pleasant Prairie plant alone saved $2.5 billion, largely by avoiding future operating and maintenance costs and additional capital investments.

Both Wisconsin Power and Light and Madison Gas and Electric also own portions of the Columbia Energy Center, and Wisconsin Power and Light also operates a unit at the Edgewater Generating Station scheduled for retirement before the end of the decade. Neither company provided estimates of the values of those facilities at time of retirement. Andrew Stoddard, a spokesman for Alliant Energy, Wisconsin Power and Light’s parent company, argued against treating plants scheduled for retirement with value on the books as future stranded assets.

How stranded assets occurred: overcommitting to coal

In 1907, Wisconsin became one of the first states to regulate public utilities. The idea was that having competing companies installing separate gas or electric lines was inefficient, but giving companies regional monopolies would require regulation.

Utility companies get permission to build or expand power plants and to raise rates from the three-member state Public Service Commission. The commissioners, appointed by the governor, are charged with protecting ratepayers as well as utility company investors.

Stranded assets have occurred across the nation, partly because of the cost of complying with pollution control regulations. But another factor is that, while other utilities around the country moved to alternative sources of energy, Wisconsin utilities and, in turn, the PSC overbet on how long coal-fired plants would operate efficiently:

• In the years before We Energies pulled the plug on Pleasant Prairie, the plant had mostly gone dark in spring and fall. Not only had coal become more expensive than natural gas and renewables, but energy consumption stayed flat. By 2016, two years before Pleasant Prairie’s closure, natural gas eclipsed coal for electricity generation nationally.

• In 2011, We Energies invested nearly $1 billion into its coal-fired Oak Creek plant south of Milwaukee to keep it running for 30 more years. The plant, which began operating in 1965 and later became one of the largest in the country, is now scheduled to completely retire in 2026 — with $650 million on the books still owed. That will cost individual ratepayers nearly $30 per year for the next 17 years, according to RMI, a think tank specializing in clean energy policy. The majority of the debt tied to those units stems from “environmental controls we were required to install to meet federal and state rules,” WEC Energy Group spokesperson Brendan Conway said.

• In 2013, to settle pollution violations, Alliant Energy announced an investment of more than $800 million in the Columbia Energy Center plant in Portage, north of Madison. But by 2021, Alliant announced plans to begin closing the plant, though now it is expected to operate until at least 2029.

Various factors encourage construction and upgrades of power plants.

Building a plant can create upwards of 1,000 construction jobs, popular with politicians. Moreover, the Public Service Commission, being a quasi-judicial body, is governed by precedent. For example, if the PSC determined it was prudent to allow construction of a utility plant, that finding would argue in favor of approving a later expansion of that plant.

The PSC allowed utility companies “to overbuild the system,” said Tom Content, executive director of the Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board, a nonprofit advocate for utility customers. “I think the mistake was that we allowed so much investment, and continuing to double down on coal when it was becoming less economic.”

Utilities “profit off of everything they build or acquire,” Stuart said, “and so there is a strong motivation to put steel in the ground and perhaps to even overbuild.”

Conway, the WEC Energy Group spokesperson, argued that the utilities’ plans to retire plants amount to a net positive for customers.

“We began our power generation reshaping plan about a decade ago,” he wrote in an email. “That includes closing older, less-efficient power plants and building new renewable energy facilities and clean, efficient natural gas plants. This plan reduces emissions and is expected to provide customers significant savings — hundreds of millions of dollars — over the life of the plan.”

Guaranteed profits add to ratepayer burden

The built-in profits that utility companies enjoy, typically 9.8%, add to the stranded assets tab.

When the Public Service Commission approves construction of a new power plant, it allows the utility company to levy electricity rates high enough to recover its investment plus the specified rate of return — even after a plant becomes a stranded asset.

“We give them this license to have a monopoly, but the challenge is there’s no incentive for them to do the least-cost option,” Content said. “So, in terms of building new plants, there’s an incentive to build more … and there’s incentive to build too much.”

When the Pleasant Prairie plant was shut down in 2018, the PSC ruled that ratepayers would continue to pay We Energies to cover the cost of the plant itself, plus the nearly 10% profit. The plant’s remaining value, initially pegged at nearly $1 billion, remained at roughly $500 million as of December 2024.

Eliminating profits on closed plants would save ratepayers $300 million on debt payments due to be made into the early 2040s, according to Content’s group.

New ‘stranded assets’ threat: data centers

As artificial intelligence pervades society, it’s hard to fathom how much more electricity will have to be generated to power all of the data centers under construction or being proposed in Wisconsin.

We Energies alone wants to add enough energy to power more than 2 million homes. That effort is largely to serve one Microsoft data center under construction in Mount Pleasant, between Milwaukee and Racine, and a data center approved north of Milwaukee in Port Washington to serve OpenAI and Oracle AI programs. Microsoft calls the Mount Pleasant facility “the world’s most powerful data center.”

Data centers are also proposed for Beaver Dam, Dane County, Janesville, Kenosha and Menomonie.

The energy demand raises the risk of more stranded assets, should the data centers turn out to be a bubble rather than boom.

“The great fear is, you build all these power plants and transmission lines and then one of these data centers only is there for a couple years, or isn’t as big as promised, and then everybody’s left holding the bag,” Stuart said.

In an October Marquette Law School poll, 55% of those surveyed said the costs of data centers outweigh the benefits. Environmental groups have called for a pause on all data center approvals. Democratic and Republican leaders are calling for data centers to pay their own way and not rely on utility ratepayers or taxpayers to pay for their electricity needs.

Opposition in one community led nearly 10,000 people to become members of the Stop the Menomonie Data Center group on Facebook. In Janesville, voters are trying to require referendums for data centers. In Port Washington, opposition to the data center there led to three arrests during a city council meeting.

Utilities are scheduled in early 2026 to request permission from the Public Service Commission to build new power plants or expand existing plants to accommodate data centers.

Some states, such as Minnesota, have adopted laws prohibiting the costs of stranded assets from data centers being passed onto ratepayers.

Wisconsin has no such laws.

Shifting cost burden to utility companies

Currently, ratepayers are on the hook for paying off the full debt of stranded assets — unless a financial tool called securitization reduces the burden on ratepayers.

Securitization is similar to refinancing a mortgage. With the state’s permission, utilities can convert a stranded asset — which isn’t typically a tradeable financial product — into a specialized bond.

Utility customers must still pay back the bond. But the interest rate on the bond is lower than the utility’s standard profit margin, meaning customers save money.

A 2024 National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners report noted that utilities’ shareholders may prefer a “status quo” scenario in which customers pay stranded asset debts and the standard rate of return. Persuading utilities to agree to securitization can require incentives from regulators or lawmakers, the report added.

In some states, utilities can securitize the remaining value of an entire power plant. Michigan utility Consumers Energy, for instance, securitized two coal generating units retired in 2023, saving its customers more than $120 million.

In Wisconsin, however, utilities can securitize only the cost of pollution control equipment on power plants — added to older coal plants during the Obama administration, when utilities opted to retrofit existing plants rather than switching to new power sources.

In 2023, two Republican state senators, Robert Cowles of Green Bay and Duey Stroebel of Saukville, introduced legislation to allow the Public Service Commission to order securitization and allow securitization to be used to refinance all debt on stranded assets. The bill attracted some Democratic cosponsors, but was opposed by the Wisconsin Utilities Association and did not get a hearing.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers proposed additional securitization in his 2025-27 budget, but the Legislature’s Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee later scrapped the provision.

Even Wisconsin’s narrow approach to securitization is optional, however, and most utilities have chosen not to use it.

We Energies was the first Wisconsin utility to do so, opting in 2020 to securitize the costs of pollution control equipment at the Pleasant Prairie plant. Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission approved the request, saving an estimated $40 million. “We will continue to explore that option in the future,” Conway said.

But the PSC expressed “disappointment” in 2024 when We Energies “was not willing to pursue securitization” to save customers $117.5 million on its soon-to-retire Oak Creek coal plant. The utility noted state law doesn’t require securitization.

Stuart said that if utilities won’t agree to more securitization, they should accept a lower profit rate once an asset becomes stranded.

“It would be nice to ease that burden,” he said. “Just to say, hey, consumers got to suck it up and deal with it, that doesn’t sound right. The issue of stranded assets, like cost overruns, is certainly ripe for investigation.”

Comprehensive planning required elsewhere — but not Wisconsin

Avoiding future stranded assets could require a level of planning impossible under Wisconsin’s current regulatory structure.

When the state’s utilities propose new power plants, PSC rules require the commission to consider each new plant alone, rather than in the context of other proposed new plants and the state’s future energy needs. Operating without what is known as an integrated resource plan, or IRP, opened the PSC to overbuilding and creating more stranded assets. IRPs are touted as an orderly way to plan for future energy needs.

“There’s no real comprehensive look in Wisconsin,” Stuart said. “We’re one of the few regulated states that really doesn’t have a comprehensive plan for our utilities.

”We’ve been doing some of these projects kind of piecemeal, without looking at the bigger picture.”

Structured planning tools like IRPs date back to the 1980s, when concerns about cost overruns, fuel price volatility and overbuilding prompted regulators to step in. Minnesota and Michigan require utilities to file IRPs, as do a majority of states nationwide.

Evers proposed IRPs in his 2025-27 state budget, but Republican lawmakers removed that provision because it was a nonfiscal policy issue.

Northern States Power Company, which operates in Wisconsin and four other Midwestern states, is required by both Michigan and Minnesota to develop IRPs. “Because of these rules, we create a multi-state IRP every few years,” said Chris Ouellette, a spokesperson for Xcel Energy, the utility’s parent company.

Madison Gas and Electric, which only operates in Wisconsin, argued that its current planning process is superior to the IRP requirements in neighboring states. “A formal IRP mandate would add process without improving outcomes,” spokesperson Steve Schultz said. “Wisconsin’s current framework allows us to move quickly, maintain industry-leading reliability and protect customer costs during a period of rapid change.”

How to influence decisions relating to stranded assets

The devil will be in the details on whether the Public Service Commission adopts strong policies to prevent the expected wave of new power plant capacity from becoming stranded assets, consumer advocates say.

The current members, all appointed by Evers, are: chairperson Summer Strand, Kristy Nieto and Marcus Hawkins.

The public can comment on pending cases before the PSC via its website, by mail or at a public hearing. The commission posts notices of its public hearings, which can be streamed via YouTube.

Among the upcoming hearings on requests by utilities to generate more electricity for data centers:

Feb. 12: We Energies’ request to service data centers in Mount Pleasant and Port Washington. We Energies says the fees it proposes, known as tariffs, will prevent costs from being shifted from the data centers to other customers. The “party” hearing is not for public comment, but for interaction between PSC staff and parties in the case, such as We Energies and public interest groups.

Feb. 26: Another party hearing for a case in which Alliant Energy also said its proposed tariffs won’t benefit the data center in Beaver Dam at the expense of other customers.

To keep abreast of case developments, the PSC offers email notifications for document filings and meetings of the commission.

The PSC would not provide an official to be interviewed for this article. It issued a statement noting that utilities can opt to do securitization to ease the financial burden on ratepayers, adding:

“Beyond that, the commission has a limited set of tools provided under state law to protect customers from costs that arise from early power plant retirements. It would be up to the state Legislature to make changes to state law that would provide the commission with additional tools.”

On Nov. 6, state Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin, D-Whitefish Bay, and Rep. Angela Stroud, D-Ashland, announced wide-ranging data center legislation. One provision of their proposal aims to ensure that data centers don’t push electricity costs onto other ratepayers.

But there is no provision on stranded assets.

This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To republish, go to the original and consult the Wisconsin Watch republishing guidelines.

Judge Hannah Dugan leaves court in her federal trial, where she was convicted of a felony for obstructing immigration officers. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

According to the Eastern District of Wisconsin’s Interim U.S. Attorney Brad Schimel, freshly appointed to his position by President Donald Trump, the federal trial of Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan had nothing to do with politics. “There’s not a political aspect to it,” Schimel told reporters after Dugan’s felony conviction on charges she obstructed U.S. immigration agents as they tried to make an arrest inside the Milwaukee courthouse. “We weren’t trying to make an example out of anyone,” Schimel said. “This was necessary to hold Judge Dugan accountable because of the actions she took.”

Schimel didn’t say whether Dugan’s very public arrest and perp walk through the courthouse was also necessary, along with the social media posts by Trump’s FBI director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi, crowing about the arrest and sharing photos of Dugan in handcuffs. 

There is no doubt that the Dugan case was highly political from the start. 

As a coalition of democracy and civic organizations in Wisconsin declared in a statement after the verdict, Dugan’s prosecution threatens the integrity of our justice system and “sends a troubling message about the consequences faced by judges who act to protect due process in their courtrooms.”

But Schimel is right about one thing: Dugan’s trial this week was mainly about “a single day — a single bad day — in a public courthouse.”

That narrow focus helped the prosecution win a conviction in a confusing mixed verdict. The jury found Dugan not guilty of a misdemeanor offense for concealing Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, the defendant she led out a side door while immigration agents waited near the main door of her courtroom to arrest him. At the same time, the jury found Dugan guilty of the more serious charge of obstructing the agents in their effort to make the arrest. The two charges are based on some of the same elements, and Dugan’s defense attorneys are now asking that her conviction be overturned on that basis.

An observer watching the trial from afar with no inside knowledge of the defense strategy might wonder why Dugan’s defense team didn’t enter a guilty plea on the misdemeanor charge and then strongly contest the felony obstruction charge as an outrageous overreach in a heavily politicized prosecution. That might have led to a more favorable mixed verdict, in which the jury found that Dugan was probably guilty of something, but that it did not rise to the level of a felony with a potential penalty of five years in prison.

I’m no expert, but daily reports from the trial this week gave me the strong impression that things weren’t going well for Dugan as long as witnesses and lawyers focused on a blow-by-blow account of the events of April 18. Witness testimony described an agitated Dugan, whose colleague, Judge Kristela Cervera, testified — damagingly —  that she was uncomfortable with how Dugan managed the federal agents she was outraged to find hanging around outside her courtroom. 

It’s not surprising that the jury agreed with the prosecution that Dugan was not cooperative and that she wanted to get Flores-Ruiz out of her courtroom in a way that made an end-run around the unprecedented meddling of federal immigration enforcement inside the courthouse. Like other judges and courthouse staff, she was upset about the disruption caused by ICE agents stalking people who showed up to court.

But, as Dean Strang, a law professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and a long-time Wisconsin criminal defense lawyer, told me in April just before he joined the defense team and stopped talking about the case to the press, “Whatever you think of the actual conduct the complaint alleges, there is a real question about whether there’s even arguably any federal crime here.” 

The government’s behavior was “extraordinarily atypical” for a nonviolent, non-drug charge involving someone who is not a flight risk, Strang added.

The handcuffs, the public arrest at Dugan’s workplace, the media circus — none of it was normal, or justified. When Bondi and Patel began posting pictures of Dugan in handcuffs on social media to brag about it, “what is it they are trying to do?” Strang asked. His conclusion: “Humiliate and terrify, not just her but every other judge in the country.”

The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, Voces de la Frontera, and Common Cause-Wisconsin agree with that assessment, writing in their statement reacting to the conviction that Dugan’s felony conviction threatens the integrity of our justice system as a whole, and undermines the functioning of the courts by scaring away defendants, witnesses and plaintiffs who are afraid they might be arrested if they show up to participate in legal proceedings.

But that big picture perspective was not a major feature of the defense’s closing arguments, which relied heavily on raising reasonable doubt about Dugan’s intentions and her actions during a stressful and chaotic day.

That’s frustrating because, contrary to Schimel’s assertions, the big picture, not the events of “a single bad day” is what was actually at stake in this case.

One of the most distressing aspects of the Dugan trial was the prosecution’s through-the-looking-glass invocation of the rule of law and the integrity of the courts.

The federal agents called to the stand, the prosecutors in the courtroom, and Schimel, in his summary of the case, made a big point about the “safety” of law enforcement officers. 

Repeatedly, we heard that immigration agents prefer to make arrests inside courthouses because they provide a “safe” environment in which to operate. 

In his comments on the verdict, Schimel emphasized that Dugan jeopardized the safety of federal officers by causing them to arrest Flores-Ruiz on the street instead of inside the courthouse: “The defendant’s actions provided an opportunity for a wanted subject to flee outside of that secure courthouse environment,” Schimel said.

This upside-down view of safety has become a regular MAGA talking point, with Republicans claiming that when citizens demand that masked agents identify themselves or make videos of ICE dragging people out of their cars, they are jeopardizing the safety of law enforcement officers — as opposed to trying to protect their neighbors’ safety in the face of violent attacks by anonymous thugs. 

Churches, day care centers and peaceful suburban neighborhoods are also “safe” environments for armed, masked federal agents. But their activities there are making our communities less safe. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Brown Watzka, delivering the prosecution’s closing argument, told the jury it must draw a line against judges interfering with law enforcement, or else “there is only chaos,” and that “chaos is what the rule of law is intended to prevent.”

But chaos is what we have now, with federal agents terrorizing communities, dragging people out of courthouses and private residences, deporting them without due process and punishing those who stand in their way in an attempt to defend civil society.

The real questions raised by Dugan’s case are whether we believe the “safety” of the agents making those dubious arrests matters more than the safety of our communities, and whether we want the courts to be able to regulate the conduct in their own courthouses as a check on the government’s exercise of raw power.

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Former President Bill Clinton, rock star Mick Jagger and the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are seated at a table in this undated photo released as part of the Epstein files on Friday, Dec. 19, 2025, by the Department of Justice. Clinton has denied any connection to Epstein's alleged crimes. (Photo from Department of Justice)

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice began releasing thousands of records Friday related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, but questions remained over whether officials will meet the requirements of a law overwhelmingly backed by both Republicans and Democrats and signed by President Donald Trump.

The department posted four data sets of images and documents just after 4 p.m. Eastern.

The trove reviewed by States Newsroom reporters contains numerous images of Epstein with celebrities, including the late pop star Michael Jackson, rock legend Mick Jagger, illusionist David Copperfield and former President Bill Clinton. Many other faces in photos are redacted. The photos were released without dates or context. 

A reproduction of Epstein’s contact list included entries for Trump, his late former wife, Ivana Trump, and his daughter, Ivanka Trump.

An array of photos of Trump with several women appeared amongst the files, according to a preliminary scan by the New York Times. But the Times also said most of the images already had been made public. 

Trump, who is prolific on social media, had not yet commented in the hours after the files were released. During an earlier press conference on prescription drugs Friday, the president declined to take any questions.

Trump had a well documented friendship with Epstein, a hedge fund manager who enjoyed a circle of wealthy and influential friends — though Trump maintains he had a falling out with Epstein and was never involved in any alleged crimes.

Since July, when Justice officials announced no further files would be released, Trump had resisted loud protests, even from his base, that all investigative material in the government’s possession should be made public. Trump repeatedly called the files a “Democrat hoax,” despite the investigation occurring during his first administration.

Files in the first dataset include images of lavishly furnished rooms, including one that appears to have a taxidermied tiger, as well as bathrooms with framed photographs of women whose faces have been redacted.

Photos in the second data set reveal Epstein seated at a table with Jagger, and another of Clinton lying in a hot tub or spa with the top of his chest visible. Another photo was of Clinton with the late pop star Michael Jackson.

Clinton was also photographed with a woman, whose face is redacted, seated on his lap and with his arm around her. In another, Clinton and Epstein stand side by side, smiling at something off camera and dressed in shiny party shirts.

A spokesperson for Clinton posted on social media that the former president was unaware of Epstein’s illegal activities and cut the financier off socially before allegations were public. The spokesperson, Angel Ureña, also redirected attention back to Trump.

“This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever,” he wrote about the Trump White House. “So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be.”

In a Dec. 10 letter from Clinton’s lawyer obtained by the New York Times, the former president denies being connected to any alleged crimes Epstein committed. 

Photos in the third dataset document Epstein’s travels to Europe, desert locations and island locales. Most photos of people other than Epstein, his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and Clinton are redacted.

The last dataset also included a completely redacted 119-page grand jury file from New York federal court. Both Epstein and Maxwell were prosecuted in New York, and the Justice Department requested the sealed records be made public.

Maxwell was convicted and sentenced for her role in the scheme to traffic teenage girls for sex.

The fourth trove of files appeared to relate to law enforcement and attorneys’ investigation into potential sex abusers, such as coordinating interviews and crafting timelines. A portion of the documents related to a 2019 grand jury were completely blacked out. 

Following the Justice Department’s release Friday afternoon, both Rep. Tom Massie, R-Ky., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who co-sponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act, released scathing statements.

“Unfortunately, today’s document release by @AGPamBondi and @DAGToddBlanche grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law that @realDonaldTrump signed just 30 days ago,” Massie posted on X.

Document release to continue

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News Friday morning the department will “release several hundred thousand documents today, and those documents will come in all different forms, photographs and other materials associated with, with all of the investigations into, into Mr. Epstein.” 

But Blanche also said the release will carry over into “the next couple of weeks,” which would be past the Friday deadline set in the law.

The law, unanimously supported by the Senate and approved by the House 427-1, requires the Justice Department to publicly disclose “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in its possession that relate to Epstein or Maxwell.” 

‘ALL the Epstein files’

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer issued a statement Friday slamming the department’s admission that it will not meet the law’s deadline. Trump signed the bill into law on Nov. 19.

“The law Congress passed and President Trump signed was clear as can be — the Trump administration had 30 days to release ALL the Epstein files, not just some. Failing to do so is breaking the law. This just shows the Department of Justice, Donald Trump, and Pam Bondi are hellbent on hiding the truth,” Schumer said, alleging a “cover up.”

“Senate Democrats are working closely with attorneys for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and with outside legal experts to assess what documents are being withheld and what is being covered up by Pam Bondi. We will not stop until the whole truth comes out,” the New York Democrat continued.

Schumer later criticized in a separate statement the late afternoon release as “just a fraction of the whole body of evidence.”

House Democrats Robert Garcia, D-Calif., and Jamie Raskin, D-Md., released a joint statement Friday stating they “are now examining all legal options in the face of this violation of federal law.” Garcia and Raskin are, respectively, the ranking members of the House Oversight and Government Reform and Judiciary committees. 

Massie, who pushed to bypass Republican leadership to pass the legislation, published a 14-minute video on social media Thursday night regarding how the public should interpret whether the Justice Department follows the statute.

“How will you know if they’ve released all the materials?” Massie said. “Well, one of the ways we’ll know is there are people who covered this case for years, and I’ve talked to them in private, then they know what some of the material is that’s back there.”

The Kentucky Republican said he’s been in contact with victims’ lawyers who claim federal investigators are in possession of names that should be contained in the files.

“If we get a large production on December 19, and it does not contain a single name of any male who’s accused of a sex crime or sex trafficking or rape, or any of these things, then we know they haven’t produced all the documents. It’s that simple,” Massie said.

In a press conference Tuesday led by several Senate Democrats, Schumer said the lawmakers have been “preparing for any scenario” and warned “there will be serious legal and political consequences” if the Trump administration withholds documents required by law to be released.

‘New information’ on Epstein cited  

The brief text of the law does not outline penalties if the deadline is not met.

Types of documents cited in the law include flight logs, plea agreements and immunity deals, and any internal DOJ communications about Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.

The law states documents cannot be delayed, redacted or withheld “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.”

Victims’ identities must be redacted, and written justification is required for any information withheld, according to the law.

Carve-outs also exist for any material relating to ongoing investigations. 

The department announced new investigations on Nov. 14 into Epstein’s ties to Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and prominent investor Reid Hoffman. 

Attorney General Pam Bondi said Nov. 19 during a press conference that “information has come forward, new information, additional information.”

House Democrats release more photos

Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform have been releasing a trickle of private files from Epstein’s estate that were handed over in response to a congressional subpoena. Committee Democrats disclosed dozens more images Thursday.

The public disclosure of the digital files, released via a cloud folder without context, follows the committee Democrats’ announcement Dec. 12 that it had received 95,000 more images from Epstein’s estate. 

Among those images was a photo of Trump surrounded by women whose faces had been redacted, and an image of apparent packaged condoms with Trump’s face on them and a sign reading “I’m HUUUUGE!” Another image, which featured an apparent “Bill Clinton” autograph, shows the former president posing with Epstein, Maxwell and others.

The latest batch of private records released included photos of Epstein with guests at meals and multiple photos of Epstein talking with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon across a sizable wooden desk in what appears to be an office with antique books and collectibles. Another photo shows Epstein dressed in traditional sheikh-style garments. 

A few images of the New York Times’ David Brooks surfaced in the latest batch as well. Epstein is not in the frame with Brooks, an opinion columnist. The Times released a statement to media outlets Thursday that “Mr. Brooks had no contact with (Epstein) before or after this single attendance at a widely-attended dinner” in 2011.

Other images feature former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates standing with a woman whose face has been redacted by the committee, and a solo photo of Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

“Oversight Democrats will continue to release photographs and documents from the Epstein estate to provide transparency for the American people,” Garcia said in a statement Thursday. “As we approach the deadline for the Epstein Files Transparency Act, these new images raise more questions about what exactly the Department of Justice has in its possession. We must end this White House cover-up, and the DOJ must release the Epstein files now.” 

Brown University President Christina Paxson speaks to reporters gathered at the Providence Public Safety Complex on Dec. 16, 2025. Gov. Dan McKee, far left, and Providence Mayor Brett Smiley are also pictured. (Photo by Christopher Shea/Rhode Island Current)

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said late Thursday she was suspending applications for a diversity visa program because the man suspected of killing two Brown University students and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor this week obtained a green card through the program in 2017.

Noem said on social media she was “immediately directing (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”  

Local authorities found the suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, dead in a New Hampshire storage unit late Thursday, five days after the shooting at Brown in Providence, Rhode Island, that wounded nine and killed two students. 

Two days after the Brown shooting, an MIT professor was found shot in his home and later died at the hospital. Authorities also linked that killing to Neves Valente.

Neves Valente, 48, attended Brown in the early 2000s.

Visa program

The diversity visa program, also known as DV1, grants up to 50,000 immigrant visas each year under a lottery system that aims to select individuals from countries with low rates of immigration to the U.S. 

Most lottery winners reside outside the United States and are processed by the State Department. Lottery winners who are within the U.S. are processed by USCIS. 

More than 14 million individuals applied for the program in 2021, the most recent year for which the State Department has data.

Noem said in her post she was acting on behalf of President Donald Trump, who tried to end the diversity visa program in his first term after an individual from Uzbekistan who came through the program carried out an attack in New York City that killed eight people.

It’s the latest effort by the Trump administration to curtail legal immigration after a tragedy. 

The administration paused asylum applications after an Afghan national who was granted asylum was charged with killing one National Guard member and wounding another in last month’s shooting in Washington, D.C.

Republican leaders in the state Legislature called Friday for Judge Hannah Dugan to resign or be impeached after a federal jury convicted her this week of a felony charge in connection with an immigration enforcement action in April at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Republican leaders in the Wisconsin Legislature called Friday for Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan to either resign or face impeachment after her conviction Thursday on a federal felony obstruction charge during an immigration enforcement action in the Milwaukee County courthouse in April.

“If Judge Dugan does not resign from her office immediately, the Assembly will begin impeachment proceedings,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August (R-Walworth) said in a joint statement issued Friday.  “Wisconsinites deserve to know that their judiciary is impartial and that justice is blind. Judge Hannah Dugan is neither, and her privilege of serving the people of Wisconsin has come to an end.” 

They noted that the last time that a Wisconsin judge was impeached was in 1853. Republican lawmakers have also introduced a bill that would withhold pay for suspended judges. 

After a four-day trial, a federal court jury convicted Dugan of felony obstruction for allowing a man who was in the country without legal authorization to exit her courtroom using a non-public hallway in April. Prosecutors argued that Dugan was trying to help the man avoid plainclothes  federal immigration agents who were waiting in the public hallway outside her court. 

Judge Dugan found guilty of felony obstruction in federal trial 

The jury found Dugan not guilty on a second charge of concealing the man, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, from federal agents. Dugan was suspended with pay by the Wisconsin Supreme Court after her arrest by FBI agents in April. 

In closing arguments, prosecutors cast Dugan as being angry due to the influx of ICE agents in the courthouse and said no one should second-guess law enforcement, including immigration officers. Defense attorneys told jurors that courthouse immigration arrests had created an environment of unease and that the federal government was trying to make an example of Dugan.

No sentencing date has been set for Dugan. Attorney Steven Biskupic, who helped represent Dugan, has said that his team plans to appeal the conviction.

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A sign advertises the availability of flu and COVID-19 vaccines at a pharmacy in Madison, Wisconsin. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

Vaccination rates for influenza and COVID-19 are low in Wisconsin, and on Thursday, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services announced that two children have died within the last month: one from the flu in northeast Wisconsin and one from COVID-19 in the western part of the state.

Citing concerns for family privacy, DHS is not releasing the ages of the children. At a media briefing, Tom Haupt, the DHS respiratory epidemiologist, said they were the first deaths of people under 18 from those illnesses since the start of the flu season Oct. 1.

Although year-to-year comparisons in mid-season are difficult, “we are definitely seeing an increase in influenza and COVID-19 at this particular point,” Haupt said.

Haupt said DHS has not yet verified whether either of the two children were vaccinated. Both had “some underlying conditions that would increase their risk” for more serious illness, he said.

Five people under 18 died from flu in January and early February 2025, Haupt said. DHS monitors certain illnesses, including flu and COVID-19, through data from hospital emergency rooms, lab tests and studying municipal wastewater for evidence of the viruses responsible.

Vaccination is the best tool for preventing serious illness from both flu and COVID-19, Haupt said.

“Our vaccination status for children for both COVID-19 and influenza are very low,” he said. “We want them to be increased significantly.”

Across all ages, about 28% of Wisconsinites have been vaccinated against the flu and 10.6% against COVID-19. “These numbers are lower than what we’ve seen over the past few years and that’s very unfortunate,” Haupt said.

DHS recommends both vaccines for everyone 6 months or older. The COVID-19 and the flu shots can both be given at the same time.

Flu can have outcomes much worse than its usual symptoms.

“Influenza could lead to cardiac problems for both children and adults. It can lead to encephalitis,” Haupt said. “So, it’s not only the acute acute part of influenza, it’s what can happen later on.” With vaccination people are “protecting yourself and protecting those people who are around you.

For a third serious respiratory illness, respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, DHS recommends the maternal RSV vaccine for expectant mothers who are 32 to 36 weeks pregnant, to protect their infants after they’re born.

DHS recommends the RSV vaccine for infants younger than 8 months if they were born to mothers who did not get the vaccine during pregnancy. DHS also recommends the vaccine for children 8 to 19 months old with a higher risk of RSV, as well as for adults 75 and older and for adults 50 to 74 years old who have an increased risk for the virus.

Haupt said doctors have told DHS that they’re encountering more vaccine hesitancy in the general public than in the past. One cause appears to be confusion about shifting recommendations from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the CDC advisory council that makes recommendations on vaccines, he said.

Haupt said that for people hesitating about getting vaccines for themselves or their children, the “most accurate sources” for information are the state health department, local public health departments, community clinics, pharmacies and primary care doctors.

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Gov. Tony Evers meets with children at a Fitchburg child care center in September 2023. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Gov. Tony Evers approved an administrative rule change Thursday meant to make it easier to place children, who are in foster care because they are unable to safely remain in their home, with relatives or “like-kin” caregivers.

“We know that kids do better when they have supportive and loving people around them, and they’re in settings where they feel safe and can be their best and full selves. Keeping adults in kids’ lives who know and love them can go a long way toward making sure a kid has the stability they need so they can be focused on being a kid,” Evers said in a statement. “This is about doing what’s best for our kids and helping increase the likelihood of youth being in an environment with their family and loved ones, especially during difficult, chaotic times in their lives.”

According to the Evers administration, the rule change will help by providing a separate, streamlined licensing pathway for relative and “like-kin” caregivers as well as ensure that there is fair financial support available for them.

The rule change is a continuation of work on the issue. In 2024, the state Legislature passed and Gov. Tony Evers signed 2023 Wisconsin Act 119 which expanded the definition of those eligible to be kinship caregivers to include first cousins once removed and adults with a “like-kin” relationship with the child, meaning people with a significant emotional relationship with a child.

According to the Department of Children and Families, in 2024, 39% of children in Wisconsin who entered out-of-home care were initially placed with relatives, increasing the likelihood that they would be placed with their siblings, experience more stability during their placement and help them achieve permanency with family.

“We know kids do better when they’re with family — however they define it. And families do better when they can spend less time running up against unnecessary administrative and financial barriers and more time together, being a family,” DCF Secretary Jeff Pertl said in a statement.

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A wolf makes its way across a road in Yellowstone National Park. (Jacob W. Frank/Courtesy of the U.S. National Park Service)

The U.S. House on Thursday passed, 211-204, a bill to remove Endangered Species Act protections for the gray wolf outside Alaska.

The bill, sponsored by Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert, would direct the Interior secretary to reissue a 2020 rule removing ESA protections that delisted wolves other than the Mexican wolf in the lower 48 states, while stipulating it could not be challenged in court. 

The rule from President Donald Trump’s first administration was struck down by a federal court in 2022.

Five Democrats voted for the bill and four Republicans voted against it. The measure was considered during the chamber’s last vote series before a two-week break, and 18 members did not vote.

Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, has sponsored a companion bill in that chamber. The measure faces an uphill road in the Senate, where passage of partisan bills is rarer due to the 60-vote threshold for most legislation.

The bill would remove gray wolves from the ESA list, even though they have not reached population figures that the Fish and Wildlife Service has said would indicate full recovery.

Rep. Donald S. Beyer, a Democrat from Virginia, said it would be reasonable to adjust population thresholds, but that congressionally mandated delisting was unwise and illegal.

“This bill fails to recognize the status of gray wolves today, taking us back to an outdated rulemaking that didn’t hold up in court,” Beyer said on the House floor Thursday.

House Natural Resources Committee ranking Democrat Jared Huffman of California said the bill set a “troubling” precedent by blocking judicial review.

“It tells the American people they no longer have the right to challenge unlawful government actions,” he said. “The ESA is simple and effective. It ensures decisions are grounded in science — that’s the heart of it — and this bill throws that principle out the window.”

Several Republicans on the Natural Resources Committee spoke in favor of the bill, saying it would delegate wolf management to states.

In a statement, Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman, an Arkansas Republican, said the gray wolf has been “fully recovered” for two decades.

“States are more than capable of managing thriving wolf populations. This legislation restores a common-sense, science-based approach to wolf management, returning decision-making to states,” he said.

Republicans also argued the bill would protect livestock and humans.

Rep. Pete Stauber showed a photo from his district in Ely, Minnesota, of a wolf in a school parking lot.

“Because of the gray wolf’s listing status, nothing could be done to protect the lives of the students there,” the Republican said. “The broken ESA is putting my constituents’ lives at risk.”

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan leaves the Milwaukee Federal Courthouse on May 15, 2025. Judge Dugan appeared in federal court to answer charges that she helped Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, an undocumented immigrant, elude federal arrest while he was making an appearance in her courtroom on April 18. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Updated at 9:14 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 18

After six hours of deliberation, a federal jury found Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan guilty of felony obstruction but not guilty of misdemeanor concealing a person from federal immigration law enforcement. The high-profile federal trial stemmed from Dugan’s interaction with federal agents who came to her courtroom to arrest a man who was appearing before her on April 18.

“You don’t have to agree with immigration enforcement policy to see this was wrong. You just have to agree the law applies equally to everyone,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Brown Watzka told the jury in closing arguments.

Dugan’s case gained national attention, with her defense attorneys saying in closing arguments that the federal government was trying to make an example of the 66-year-old judge in an effort to “crush” those who try to stand up to federal power. Defense attorney Jason Luczak asked the jury to consider whether they were willing to accept the level of government overreach he and other attorneys argued was exemplified in the case. 

Dugan invoked her Fifth Amendment rights and didn’t testify during the trial. 

During their deliberations, the jurors asked multiple questions of the judge. Among them was whether Dugan needed to know exactly who immigration officers had come to the courthouse to arrest. The question went to the obstruction charge Dugan faced, and U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman decided that in fact Dugan would need to have known the federal agent’s target in order for the obstruction charge to apply. Prosecutors argued vehemently against Adelman’s decision.

Jurors also asked to see the policies of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in regards to serving warrants. 

Later, after another jury question, Adelman advised jurors that Dugan needed to have “sufficient knowledge” of a “pending proceeding,” as defined in statute, in order to obstruct that proceeding. 

Closing arguments

Prosecutors made their closing arguments in the federal trial Thursday, asking jurors to consider what happens when judges decide which laws they want to follow based on their own personal beliefs. Dugan was accused of interfering with federal agents as they tried to make an immigration arrest outside her courtroom, and with helping their target to evade arrest. Jurors, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Brown Watzka said in her closing argument, must draw a line, without which “there is only chaos,” and that “chaos is what the rule of law is intended to prevent. 

Calling immigration enforcement a “polarizing issue” nationwide, prosecutors said that Dugan was not on trial for her personal beliefs, but because she “stepped outside of the law.” As they flashed slides and footage to the jury, the prosecution heavily featured statements from Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Kristela Cervera, who accompanied Dugan into the hallway at the courthouse to confront the agents. Cervera testified against Dugan saying, “judges shouldn’t be helping defendants evade arrest,” a quote prosecutors highlighted to the jury. 

Dugan knew that the agents had a warrant, prosecutors argued, yet concealed Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, the immigrant they were there to arrest. Dugan’s obstruction of the agents was completed the moment she led Flores-Ruiz and his attorney, Mercedes de la Rosa, to a non-public door to exit her courtroom, the prosecution asserted. Flores-Ruiz exited into the same hallway where agents were waiting for him, and they arrested him shortly afterwards outside the courthouse. But “it simply does not matter what happened next,” prosecutors said. 

Although de la Rosa, whom prosecutors described as “naive and inexperienced,” took the door to the public hallway where agents were waiting, they told the jury Dugan intended for Flores-Ruiz and his attorney to use a staircase to exit on the fifth floor. To buttress their argument, prosecutors played courtroom audio that captured Dugan talking with court reporter Joan Butz and saying “down the stairs” as well as Dugan saying, “I’ll do it…I’ll take the heat,” and Butz responding, “I’d rather get in trouble.” 

Prosecutors argued that had Flores-Ruiz taken the stairs instead of going out into the hallway, that the agents “would have never found” the Mexican-born man, who was in the country without legal authorization. Repeatedly, prosecutors said that no one should ever “second guess” the decisions of ICE agents and law enforcement. 

Dugan was described as “stern” and “angrily pointing” in the hallway, rounding up nearly the entire arrest team and telling them to go to the chief judge’s office. Cervera led the agents to the office, testifying that she felt “abandoned” by Dugan and  “roped into” Dugan’s plan. “No one is above the law,” the prosecution stressed.

Attorney Jason Luczak, delivering the closing  for Dugan’s defense, tried to poke holes in the prosecution’s narrative. “This is a very important case; this is a very unprecedented trial,” Luczak said. “Make no mistake…the government is trying to make an example” out of Dugan, he said. He added that the jury had the power to check what he described as “overreach” by the federal government. 

Luczak stressed that prior to the second Trump administration, ICE arrests had never occurred at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. When the arrests began in late March, individuals had been reportedly arrested in elevators and before attending family court, actions which should have been reported up the agency’s chain of command but weren’t, he said. “They’re not even following their own policies,” Luczak said. “This caused concerns, legitimate concerns, among the judges.” 

The jury was asked to consider whether they really believe that Dugan would put her career at risk for Flores-Ruiz. “This case is riddled with doubts,” said Luczak, stressing that the jury could only convict if they find Dugan guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. “There are consequences on rubber-stamping what the government wants you to rubber-stamp,” he said.

Jurors were reminded of the many emails sent by various judges asking for a policy, sharing stories of having people detained during court, and the slew of questions they had about how the county courthouse could respond. Chief Judge Carl Ashley had released a statement saying that ICE presence at the courthouse discouraged participation in the justice process and eroded trust in the courts’ integrity. 

Luczak also cast doubt on Cervera’s testimony. Jurors were played mute security camera video and asked to decide whether they believe Cervera that Dugan told the agents three times that they needed a judicial warrant, something that didn’t appear to happen in the video. “Judge Cervera is wrong,” said Luczak. “I don’t know if she’s lying, but I could think of some reasons why.” Cervera, the attorney argued, was trying to save herself by throwing Dugan under the bus. “You’re either a friend or an enemy of the government,” he said, asking the jury to consider why prosecutors relied on her statements so heavily. 

When Dugan spoke with the agents, Luczak said, “she’s not being confrontational, she’s being a judge.” He also highlighted that agents contradicted themselves in testimony and in the interviews they gave to FBI agents after the incident. Luczak pointed out that the agents never ran down the hallway to the elevators, as they’d implied. The audio evidence provided by prosecutors had also been taken from multiple microphones and put into one file, and was not audible in many areas, Luczak told the jury, adding, “I don’t think you can see this as very good evidence at all.” 

“If you don’t trust the evidence that the government is putting forward, it’s just another reasonable doubt,” Luczak said. Dugan never concealed Flores-Ruiz from the agents, who never entered her court to keep eyes on him, he said, adding that she never told de la Rosa to take the stairs. Luczak highlighted that prosecutors showed the jury video of the hall, with the filmer going down the stairs and not into the hallway, the opposite of what actually occurred. He called the government’s downplaying of concerns around ICE “tone deaf,” and questioned why Cervera herself texted her sister to warn her about sweeping arrests coming to the courthouse if she, too, didn’t have concerns.

“Justice is not what the government is seeking today,” Luczak. “They’re just wrong.” He told the jury to rely on Dugan’s emails to determine her state of mind, including one where she wrote: “We are in some uncharted waters with some very serious and even potential tragic community interests at risk in the balance.” 

The jury was given instructions by Adelman, and began deliberations shortly after 2 p.m. At around 3:45 p.m., the jury sent out a question to the judge. Interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin Brad Schimel, who lost a bid for the Wisconsin Supreme Court earlier this year, made an appearance in the gallery as Adelman read the question from jurors about whether they were allowed to see ICE policies, which were included among the exhibits. 

Defense calls former Mayor Barrett as character witness

As witness testimony in the trial against Dugan concluded Thursday morning, Milwaukee County judges and public defenders spoke about the confusion and questions they faced when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began arresting people at the county courthouse. Former Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett was also called to the stand as a character witness, testifying that he’s  known Dugan for over 50 years since they were in high school together. 

Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judges Katie Kegel and Laura Gramling-Perez testified for the defense about emails local judges sent each other, asking for guidance and sharing stories about having people “snatched” out of their courtrooms and seeing ICE agents sitting in cars outside the court. 

One judge chimed in on the chain, “does this mean that Milwaukee County is cooperating with ICE?” Milwaukee County does not cooperate with ICE detainer requests in the jail. The Milwaukee Police Department also has its own policies limiting cooperation with ICE.

Judges air concerns about courthouse arrests

In one of her emails, Gramling-Perez strongly urged the creation of a policy on courthouse arrests by ICE. Under such a policy, she testified, ICE agents would be required to check in with the chief judge before conducting any enforcement. When the arrest team arrived the morning of April 18, they checked in with security who notified their supervisors at the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office. Security initially believed the agents would need to be escorted by the sheriff’s office, but a sergeant told them that wouldn’t be necessary. 

Gramling-Perez reviewed emails on the stand that said “the historic protocols are now shifting quickly,” and explaining  that although state and local law enforcement have conducted arrests around the court in the past, those activities were always guided by clear policies or practices which were respected by law enforcement. “The ICE detentions are a different animal,” one email stated.

Prosecutors repeatedly attempted to get Gramling-Perez to say that ICE arrests were allowed in public hallways, per the “key takeaways” that she outlined in her email to Dugan and other judges. Gramling-Perez, however, didn’t budge. When prosecutors showed her images of documents they claimed were part of her presentation, she said she’d never seen them before. When they pressed her to say that ICE arrests could happen in public hallways, she countered that her emailed explanations were not all inclusive, that she is not an expert on the matter, but that even public hallway arrests have their limits. 

Gramling-Perez testified that although discussion of a policy had begun, no policy had yet been established by the chief judge. 

Attorney Maura Gingerich, a public defender, was also called to the stand as a defense witness. Gingerich testified wearing a black suit with a black mask she said she wore for health reasons — attire similar to what she wore on April 18, when security cameras captured her photographing the plain-clothes ICE, FBI, DEA, and Border Patrol task force members in the courthouse hallway. Gingerich testified that she took photographs of the agents to send to her supervisor, so that the chief judge would be notified that the agents had returned and could offer guidance. 

“I think that it was very stressful to see what I thought were a number of law enforcement on the sixth floor without uniform,” Gingerich testified, noting she had already gone to another courtroom when Dugan approached the agents. One of the prosecutors  suggested  Gingerich followed the agents to another courtroom and was cooperating with Dugan,  saying, “I know what you guys were trying to do,” but Gingrich denied that characterization. Gingrich said she never saw Dugan that morning. 

Barrett calls Dugan ‘extremely honest’; Dugan invokes the Fifth Amendment

Former Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett testified as a character witness for Dugan, saying he has known her and the Dugan family for half a century. They first met when they attended the same high school.

Barrett described Dugan as very active in the community, an enthusiastic participant in community organizations and in  her church. “I think that she is extremely honest and I know that she will tell you exactly how she feels,” Barrett testified, adding that he feels that Dugan is a good person. 

The defense rested its case ahead of a lunch break. Dugan invoked her Fifth Amendment rights not to testify. Defense attorney Steven Biskupic noted on the record that he objected  to draft instructions the judge gave the jury, after Adleman chose jury instructions crafted by the prosecution instead of the defense.

Dugan faces up to five years in prison and a $350,000 fine for the felony conviction, but as a nonviolent offender with a record of service to her community is unlikely to be sentenced to time behind bars. Her sentencing hearing has not yet been scheduled.

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Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz speaks at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 18, 2025. Oz and other Trump administration officials announced proposed rules that would limit gender-affirming care for minors. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration took major steps Thursday in a campaign to block minors’ access to gender-affirming care nationwide. 

Under two proposed new rules from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, hospitals would be barred from providing gender transition treatment for children as a condition of participating in Medicare and Medicaid programs, and Medicaid funding would be prohibited from being used to fund such care for minors. 

As most hospitals receive Medicare and Medicaid funding, the rules would essentially have the effect of a nationwide ban if they are finalized. 

The announcement came a day after the U.S. House passed a bill that would impose federal criminal penalties for gender-affirming care for minors and hours before it advanced a separate measure that would prohibit Medicaid funding for gender transition treatment for minors. 

The proposed regulations, which will next undergo a period of public comments, are certain to draw legal challenges.

The efforts build on Trump’s executive order in January that restricted access to gender-affirming care for kids. 

More than half of states already have laws or policies aimed at limiting youth access to gender-affirming care, according to the nonpartisan health research organization KFF. 

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz announced the proposals alongside several other health officials at a press conference at HHS headquarters in Washington, D.C. 

The room featured a handful of GOP members of Congress. At least two Republican state attorneys general — Ken Paxton of Texas and Todd Rokita of Indiana — were also in attendance.

At the press conference, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary said the FDA is also sending “warning letters” to 12 breast binder manufacturers and sellers for “illegal marketing of breast binders for children for the purposes of treating gender dysphoria.” 

Breast binders are used to flatten tissue in the chest.  

Kennedy said his agency’s Office for Civil Rights is moving to “reverse the Biden administration’s attempt to include gender dysphoria within the definition of disability.” 

House passes anti-transgender bills 

The proposed rules are part of the Trump administration’s broader anti-trans agenda. 

Trump has signed executive orders that make it the “policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” aimed to bar openly transgender service members from the U.S. military, and sought to prohibit trans athletes from competing on women’s sports teams consistent with their gender identity.

Meanwhile, efforts at the congressional level to restrict youth access to gender-affirming care face a dismal path in the Senate, where any legislation would likely need the backing of at least 60 senators to advance past the filibuster.

The House passed a measure Wednesday night, 216-211, that would subject medical professionals to up to 10 years in prison for providing gender-affirming care for minors. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who sponsored the legislation, called its passage a “win for children all over America,” in a social media post Wednesday. 

It’s likely the last legislative achievement for the Georgia Republican, who is resigning from Congress in early January. 

Four Republicans voted against the measure: Reps. Gabe Evans of Colorado, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Mike Kennedy of Utah and Mike Lawler of New York.

Three Democrats voted with the GOP to back the bill: Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas and Don Davis of North Carolina.

The House also passed a measure Thursday, 215-201, from Texas GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw and Greene that aims to prohibit “Medicaid funding for gender transition procedures for minors.” 

Cuellar, Gonzalez and Davis also backed the GOP-led bill, along with fellow Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state. 

‘Cruel and unconstitutional attacks’ 

Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, blasted the administration’s proposals, saying they “would put Donald Trump and RFK Jr. in those doctor’s offices, ripping health care decisions from the hands of families and putting it in the grips of the anti-LGBTQ+ fringe.”  

Robinson also emphasized that the rules are “proposals, not binding law,” and called on community members, health care providers, administrators and allies to “be vocal in pushing back by sharing the ways these proposals would be devastating to their families and the healthcare community at large.” 

The American Civil Liberties Union also condemned the administration’s proposals and vowed to challenge the efforts in court. 

Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project, dubbed the proposals “cruel and unconstitutional attacks on the rights of transgender youth and their families.” 

Strangio said the proposals would “force doctors to choose between their ethical obligations to their patients and the threat of losing federal funding” and “uproot families who have already fled state-level bans, leaving them with nowhere to turn for the care they need to survive and thrive.”

A Tennessee voter casts his ballot in Nashville during a special election this month. The U.S. Department of Justice has sent confidential draft agreements on voter data sharing to more than a dozen states, including Tennessee — part of the Trump administration’s effort to obtain unredacted voter rolls from states. (Photo by Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

The U.S. Department of Justice has sent a confidential draft agreement to more than a dozen states that would require election officials to remove any alleged ineligible voters identified during a federal review of their voter rolls.

The agreement — called a memorandum of understanding, or MOU — would hand the federal government a major role in election administration, a responsibility that belongs to the states under the U.S. Constitution.

A Justice Department official identified 11 states that have expressed an interest in the agreement during a federal court hearing in December, according to a transcript reviewed by Stateline. Two additional states, Colorado and Wisconsin, have publicly rejected the memorandum of understanding and released copies of the proposal.

The 11 states “all fall into the list of, they have expressed with us a willingness to comply based on the represented MOU that we have sent them,” Eric Neff, the acting chief of the Justice Department’s Voting Section, said at the hearing. He spoke at a Dec. 4 hearing in a federal lawsuit brought by the Justice Department against California, which has refused a demand for the state’s voter data.

Neff’s courtroom disclosure, which Stateline is the first to report, comes as the Justice Department has sued 21 states and the District of Columbia for unredacted copies of their voter rolls after demanding the data from most states in recent months. The unredacted lists include sensitive personal information, such as driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers.

The states Neff identified are led by Republicans — Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia.

The draft memorandum of understanding represents a new effort by the Trump administration to gain access to some states’ voter data without litigation.

The administration’s lawsuits mostly target Democratic states, where election officials refused initial requests for voter data and allege the demand is unlawful and risks the privacy of millions of voters. They have also voiced fears that the Trump administration could use the information to target its political enemies.

Neff said four states with Republican secretaries of state — Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas and Wyoming — have “complied voluntarily” with the Justice Department’s demand without memoranda of understanding.

The Justice Department says it needs voters’ detailed information to ensure ineligible people are kept off state voter rolls and that only citizens are voting.

Federal officials say they will follow federal privacy laws, but critics fear voter data is being shared with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which operates a powerful citizenship verification tool known as SAVE. The Trump administration has previously confirmed the Justice Department plans to share voter data with Homeland Security.

“What the DOJ is trying to do is something that should frighten everybody across the political spectrum,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research. “They’re trying to use the power of the executive branch to bully states into turning over highly sensitive data: date of birth, Social Security number, driver’s license — the holy trinity of identity theft.”

Becker, who worked as a senior trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Voting Section during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, told reporters on Dec. 8 that several states received the memorandum. But Neff’s identification of 11 states wasn’t widely available until the judge in the California lawsuit on Tuesday ordered the transcript of the Dec. 4 hearing immediately posted to the lawsuit’s public docket, where Stateline accessed it.

The draft memorandum of understanding, which is labeled “confidential,” outlines the terms of the proposed agreement between each state and the Justice Department. After a state provides its voter roll, the federal department would agree to test, analyze and assess the information. The department would then notify states of “any voter list maintenance issues, insufficiencies, inadequacies, deficiencies, anomalies, or concerns” found.

Each state would agree to “clean” its voter roll within 45 days by removing any ineligible voters, according to the memorandum. States would then resubmit their voter data to the Justice Department for verification.

While the Justice Department has demanded states’ voter rolls since this summer, the memorandum of understanding offers the most detailed picture to date of how the Trump administration plans to use the data.

“It lays out in a way that we haven’t seen in any other context their plan for one of the things, I will say, that they plan to do, which is disturbing,” said Eileen O’Connor, a senior counsel and manager in the voting rights and election program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, a progressive think tank.

O’Connor was a trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Voting Section during the Obama, first Trump and Biden administrations. “I think with each passing lawsuit, they are clearly trying to create a national database of every voter in the country,” she said.

The Justice Department didn’t answer questions from Stateline about how many states had been sent the memorandum and whether any had signed it.

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, wrote in a statement to Stateline that the department has a statutory mandate to enforce federal voting rights laws. Ensuring the voting public’s confidence in election integrity is a top priority of the Trump administration, she wrote.

“Clean voter rolls and basic election safeguards are requisites for free, fair, and transparent elections,” Dhillon wrote.

Federal involvement in elections

The Justice Department memorandum, if implemented, would mark a significant departure from how election officials typically maintain voter rolls.

States, often in coordination with local election officials, check lists for changes in address, deaths and other reasons for ineligibility, such as a felony conviction. States typically perform this task with little to no federal involvement.

Some states participate in voluntary programs that allow election officials to share voter information with other states for the purposes of looking for voters who may have moved or who are registered in multiple locations. But those don’t include the federal government, which plays a limited role in election administration under the United States’ decentralized approach to elections.

Matt Crane, executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, said clerks continually look at death records and other sources of data to update voter lists. He said the United States’ localized election system is a strength that guards against election interference.

“The federal government has no role in list maintenance,” Crane said.

But that has begun to change under the Trump administration, as President Donald Trump has made removing noncitizen voters a priority.

Earlier this year, Homeland Security overhauled the SAVE program into a tool that can scan millions of voter records against government databases for evidence of citizenship. The program was previously used for one-off searches to check whether noncitizens were eligible for government benefits.

Some Republican secretaries of state have agreed to upload their voter rolls into SAVE. Democratic secretaries of state object to using the program and say they are wary of what will happen to the voter information once it’s provided to the Trump administration, including its potential use by the Department of Homeland Security.

While SAVE can flag voters with potential eligibility issues, the onus now is still on state officials to investigate whether those voters are actually ineligible and decide whether to initiate a process to remove them from the rolls.

By contrast, the Justice Department memorandum would empower federal officials to take a more active role, allowing them to check the work of state election officials as they remove — or don’t remove — voters.

“We have a system that allows Americans to voice their opinions and to hold government accountable, and that is so fundamentally central to the way our system works,” Oregon Democratic Secretary of State Tobias Read, who has been sued by the Justice Department, said in an interview. “We should be focused on how to make that better, not on erecting artificial barriers and putting people’s privacy and confidence at risk for no reason.”

Republican interest

Some GOP election officials have welcomed the Trump administration’s interest and have accused the Biden administration of not doing enough to help states vet their voter rolls. In particular, they praise the overhaul of SAVE, which some GOP secretaries of state had requested before Trump took office.

Some secretaries have touted the removal of noncitizen voters after using SAVE. Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, a Republican, in November announced three voters identified as noncitizens had been removed from his state’s voter rolls. Gray has also provided the Justice Department with full access to Wyoming’s voter roll.

“The voter list maintenance that we have been conducting is extremely important for election integrity,” Gray said in a news release.

But as of early December, nearly all states hadn’t provided the Justice Department access to their unredacted voter rolls, with Neff identifying only four that had shared their lists. It also remains unclear whether any state has signed the memorandum of understanding. No state has told Stateline it signed the document.

Nebraska Secretary of State Robert Evnen, a Republican, has received a memorandum of understanding and plans to comply with the Justice Department request, pending the outcome of an ongoing lawsuit, Evnen spokesperson Rani Taborek-Potter wrote in an email to Stateline. A voting advocacy group has sued to block the release of the data.

In an interview with Kentucky Lantern, Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams said that his office was “going back and forth a little bit” with the Justice Department over what federal law requires.

“We’ve not really figured out exactly where that line is of what-all they’re entitled to,” Adams said. “What’s not in dispute is they’re entitled to the vast majority of information — people’s names, addresses, birthdays — and we’ve given them all of that.”

Adams added that many state officials “are in the same boat of trying to figure out what exactly they need to do their job and what our obligations are legally.”

Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican, confirmed in a statement to Stateline that her office received a proposed memorandum of understanding from the Justice Department. “We are in the process of reviewing the document with our attorneys and carefully considering our options,” Henderson wrote.

Rachael Dunn, a spokesperson for Missouri Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, wrote in an email that the state hadn’t entered into an agreement with the Justice Department “at this time.”

DOJ ‘contractor’ could get voter data

The draft agreement would give the Justice Department wide authority to share the voter data of states that sign on.

The department would be authorized to share the data with “a contractor” who needs access “to perform duties related” to voter list maintenance verification, according to the draft agreement. The agreement doesn’t name any contractors or specify whether they would be inside or outside of government.

Two states have publicly rejected the draft agreement. Colorado Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold announced Dec. 3 she would refuse to sign the memorandum. The Justice Department later sued Colorado.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission also rejected the draft agreement that week. In a Dec. 11 letter to Neff, the Justice Department official, the commissioners wrote that state law prohibits them from releasing certain personally identifiable information, such as date of birth, Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers.

“I don’t look at the action that we’re taking today to be commentary on the motive of the appropriateness of the Department of Justice’s request,” Commissioner Don Millis, a Republican appointee, said at a virtual commission meeting the same day. “The U.S. DOJ is simply asking the commission to do something that the commission is explicitly forbidden by Wisconsin law to do.”

The Justice Department on Thursday sued Wisconsin for its voter data.

Justin Levitt, who served as senior policy adviser for democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House and is now a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, told Stateline in an email that he expects no states to sign the agreement.

“It’s no surprise that both Colorado and Wisconsin said no — and I don’t think that’s a question of political leadership,” Levitt wrote. “It’s hard for me to imagine any Republican state with faith in its own list maintenance capacity agreeing to outsource that decision to the DOJ.”

VRLData Sharing Agreement DOJ-WI (2)

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct when Colorado refused to sign the memorandum and when the suit was brought against the state. Colorado Newsline’s Lindsey Toomer contributed reporting. Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@stateline.org.

A PFAS advisory sign along Starkweather Creek. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

A Wisconsin Senate committee held a public hearing Thursday on a bipartisan bill that would require the state Department of Natural Resources to notify county and tribal governments when local groundwater contamination is found to exceed state standards. 

Throughout the hearing, the bill’s authors and residents of communities with water quality problems complained of incidents in which significant amounts of time passed before people learned their water was contaminated with harmful chemicals such as nitrates or PFAS. 

“Time really counts, hours, days, weeks, and in our case, even years,” said Lee Donahue, a resident of the town of Campbell on French Island near La Crosse, which has been dealing with PFAS contamination for years. “It’s been heart wrenching to know that my family and my friends and my neighbors have all been impacted by these toxic chemicals. I don’t wish anyone to have contamination in their water. And the sad part is we had no clue that PFAS was pouring from our faucets and that we were drinking that water for years and years and years before any notification was made.”

Initially authored by Rep. Jill Billings (D-La Crosse) and Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp), more than 60 legislators of both parties have signed onto the bill as co-sponsors, signaling the legislation has enough support to be signed into law during a legislative session in which efforts to find compromise on environmental issues — including efforts to extend the Knowles-Nelson stewardship grant program and to create a method to spend $125 million that has been set aside for more than two years to remediate PFAS contamination — have been stuck in the partisan muck. 

Under the bill, if the DNR finds an exceedance of the state’s groundwater standards the department will have seven days to notify the local county or tribal health department as well as the county land and conservation department. 

For several years, Wisconsin policymakers have been unable to establish a state standard for the acceptable amount of PFAS in the state’s groundwater, hitting roadblocks at the state Natural Resources Board and in the Republican-controlled Legislature. The state does have established standards for the amount of PFAS in the state’s surface water and the drinking water provided by municipal water utilities. 

As the Legislature has tried and failed to pass a bill that would spend the $125 million in the PFAS trust fund, residents of communities affected by PFAS contamination have frequently said the policy change they’d most like to see is the establishment of a groundwater standard. 

The contaminant notification bill does not establish a groundwater standard for PFAS, however it requires the DNR to notify the county government if the groundwater is found to have PFAS levels higher than the existing state standards for PFAS in surface or drinking water. 

About one-third of Wisconsin residents get their water from private drinking wells. While the bill does not establish a groundwater standard and does not provide any assistance if the groundwater they use to shower, brush their teeth, make coffee or mix baby formula is contaminated, proponents said it does make sure residents have the information they need to make decisions about the source of their water. 

“If people have a right to clean water, then they have a right to know when their water is not clean,” said Michael Tiboris, the agriculture and water policy director at the River Alliance of Wisconsin. “And this bill is exactly the kind of action that we appreciate having legislators take a strong position on, giving families knowledge of the threats to their drinking water makes it possible for them to protect themselves.” 

None of the people or groups that testified at the hearing Thursday were in opposition to the bill, but a few industry groups expressed a handful of complaints and said they’d like to see amendments to the bill’s final version. 

The concerns of business groups centered around making sure that any notifications were made after test results have been verified and making sure that the notifications don’t instigate regulatory action from the government that it doesn’t have the authority to undertake. 

“It’s just not appropriate for the government to take any kind of action,” said Adam Jordahl, director of environmental and energy policy at Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. “I know it’s not a direct regulatory action where we’re expecting an individual or business to do something or comply with something, but nevertheless, the issue of sort of holding people accountable to a regulatory PFAS standard that has not yet actually been promulgated into the administrative code. We find that to be very problematic and kind of a slippery slope going down in terms of holding people accountable or responsible to something that hasn’t gone through the full rulemaking process.”

Scott Suder, the president of the Wisconsin Paper Council, said he’s concerned that prematurely telling people their water is contaminated could create “reputational risks” for nearby businesses. 

“It creates unnecessary legal and reputational risk for industry, potentially because the notice is subject to public inspection and copying under [Wisconsin open records law],” Suder said. “All exceedance notifications would become public records, creating significant disclosure and some reputational risks, so even minor errors or omissions could trigger liabilities, and the visibility of exceedances may lead to public misunderstanding about actual risks. So it is a bit concerning for industry as well.”

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A cannabis pre-roll is held at a legalization anniversary party in Cranston, Rhode Island, Dec. 1, 2023. (Photo by Christopher Shea/Rhode Island Current)

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday to loosen federal restrictions on marijuana, which Trump said reflected the drug’s potential medical benefits while discouraging recreational use.

The order moves cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III on the Federal Drug Administration’s list of controlled substances. Schedule I, the most restrictive category under federal law, indicates a high likelihood of abuse and no accepted medical value. 

Trump said the move reflected that cannabis could have medicinal value, even if abuse was still possible.

The order “doesn’t legalize marijuana in any way, shape or form and in no way sanctions its use as a recreational drug,” Trump said. “Just as the prescription painkillers may have legitimate uses, but can also do irreversible damage … it’s never safe to use powerful controlled substances in recreational matters.”

Still, the order marks a major step in the decades-long liberalization of cannabis policy. 

Since 2012, when Washington and Colorado voters legalized personal marijuana use, 22 other states have legalized at least some form of recreational use. Only 10 states still restrict both medicinal and recreational use.

In a statement, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, praised Trump while calling for further reforms to bring federal law into harmony with states where the drug is legal.

“I thank the President and am pleased that they are finally taking this step to begin the process to reschedule,” Polis wrote. “Colorado’s cannabis industry is the gold standard ensuring that products are safe and regulated. It’s good to see the federal government finally following suit, but it’s frustrating it’s taken this long and there is much more to do for a full descheduling,”

President Joe Biden started the process for rescheduling the drug last year.

Medical angle

A group of administration officials and medical doctors flanked Trump during the Oval Office signing, with some speaking to the potential medical benefits of marijuana, including as an alternative to highly addictive opioid painkillers.

“The facts compel the federal government to recognize that marijuana can be legitimate in terms of medical applications when carefully administered,” Trump said.

Researching the potential benefits of marijuana is nearly impossible because of the tight restrictions on Schedule I substances, advocates have argued.

Removing cannabis from Schedule I would help ease those restrictions, Trump said. 

“This reclassification order will make it far easier to conduct marijuana-related medical research, allowing us to study benefits, potential dangers and future treatments,” he said. “It’s going to have a tremendously positive impact.”

In addition to researchers, the split between federal law and the legal landscape in many states has created challenges for the industry, users and law enforcement, among others.

For example, the unusual position of state-legal businesses in a federally banned industry means they cannot use certain tax provisions, access some banking instruments or transport their product across state lines.

In a lengthy statement, Paul Armentano, the deputy director of leading marijuana legalization organization National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, offered qualified praise for the move, saying it “validates the experience” of patients who have used marijuana to treat chronic pain and other conditions. 

“This directive certainly marks a long overdue change in direction,” Armentano said. “But while such a move potentially provides some benefits to patients, and veterans especially, it still falls well short of the changes necessary to bring federal marijuana policy into the 21st century. Specifically, rescheduling fails to harmonize federal marijuana policy with the cannabis laws of most states.”

The reclassification could provide tax relief to many marijuana businesses, he added.

GOP senators opposed move

Many Republicans in Congress remain opposed to legalizing marijuana.

In a letter dated Wednesday, 24 Senate Republicans urged Trump not to reclassify marijuana, which they said had a high likelihood of abuse and no medical value.

Allowing marijuana businesses to take advantage of federal tax deductions would give them a tax break of as much as $2.3 billion, allowing them to increase marketing efforts and expand into additional states, the lawmakers wrote. The benefits of economic growth would be outweighed by the costs of accidents, “not to mention the moral costs of marijuana advertising that could reach kids,” they wrote.

“In light of the documented dangers of marijuana, facilitating the growth of the marijuana industry is at odds with growing our economy and encouraging healthy lifestyles for Americans,” the GOP senators wrote. “We urge you to continue your strong leadership of our country and our economy, and to turn away from marijuana rescheduling.”

North Carolina’s Ted Budd led the letter, which was also signed by John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, John Cornyn of Texas, Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Jim Banks of Indiana, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Crapo and Jim Risch of Idaho, Rick Scott of Florida, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.